[acatnamedjoe]

Word counts in essays in my experience are maximums not minimums.

For an advanced student writing about sufficiently complex topic, the challenge is to develop an argument in less than 5000 words, rather than to reach 5000 words.

And there is a big difference between writing an outline (which is valuable and important!) and actually expressing those ideas fully. The latter forces you to clarify your ideas much more precisely - which is a really valuable experience in exploring and understanding the details of a topic.

[noahjk]

This assumes that the student places the class and knowledge (and writing effort) high in their list of priorities. I'd imagine that the people who are enticed to use an AI solution for writing an essay would have otherwise found writing it way down on their list of desires and would therefore be using many of the tried-and-true tricks to pad out their work.

[acatnamedjoe]

Well sure, if a student doesn't engage meaningfully with the essay and just writes a load of waffle to fill the word count, they won't learn as much and they'll get a bad mark.

In that case sure, the whole exercise is kind of a waste of time, but you could say that about basically any educational method surely? You can take a horse to water and all that...