[gchallen]

> Of course there are lots of rationalizations for why every program needs to be unique and special, but does it really benefit the students?

Of course not. What would benefit the students would be having a lot more standardization so that we compare ideas and approaches and determine what works. But the problem with standardized evaluation is that half of the programs suddenly discover that they aren't in the top half—as most of them had previously thought. This seems like more or less what happened to standardized testing in K–12 education.

But, in the context of a specific curriculum, having no idea what is happening and therefore no way to improve your bespoke curriculum is even worse than just deciding to do things your own way.

And it's worse than medicine, because at least they have some common metrics for what it means to be healthy. Whereas, faculty get to assign grades however they want! Imagine you ran a diet study where you both controlled the meals and got to reposition the numbers on the scale at will.