[sieste]

> Many universities have almost a "no child left behind" policy.

That's true, it's difficult to encourage independent learning at undergrad level and we often end up hand holding and spoon feeding material like in high school. This is partly because it's an easy fix to avoid the most negative student evaluations from the "I won't put in the work and when I fail it's the teacher's fault" types. There aren't many of those but the vocal few can really ruin evaluation average of an otherwise great course. The downside of the policy is obviously that the can gets kicked down the road and employers have to deal with the inability to learn independently.

[nicoburns]

IMO the more fundamental problem is that the examinations typically won’t measure how much students have learnt independently. If you want to do well in most university exams, then you need to pay very close attention to exactly what the professor wants you to learn and make sure you’re learning exactly that.

It is possible to design exams that actually grade people on their knowledge of the subject in general, but most universities seem to leave exam design to the course leader, so quality varies drastically.

[xanderlewis]

I’m sure it depends greatly on subject, but my experience has been quite the opposite. If you do even a modicum of learning ‘outside the classroom’ many exam questions suddenly become a routine triviality. If you learn only what the lecturer intends you directly to learn, you end up at a point where the exam is optimally difficult.

Looking at textbooks and other universities’ lecture notes on your own is so effective it almost feels like cheating!

[_heimdall]

There are benefits to this model too though. Centralized exam design will be slower to adjust and adapt as industries evolve and the skills needed change.

When individual professors write exams, the good ones will have exams that better match what students will need to learn today. The bad professors that can't write quality exams honestly should just be trained and/or let go if the problem persists.