A century or two ago, students in a Latin class wrote paragraphs or poems in the style of a particular author. The student was supposed to learn the rules of Latin grammar, not how to write great literature. The closer the assignment was to a pastiche of the poetry of Horace, for example, the more successful it was, even though Horace himself didn’t write in imitation of anyone.

Evaluation of learning in formal education is largely determined by what’s convenient for the evaluator, not by any concern for what the student has learned. Certainly time pressure exams don’t provide a complete measure of what a student has learned (but more accurately a student’s ability to take time pressure exams), but neither do term papers, which are typically imitations of academic writing and research (and measure not creativity or originality but a student’s ability to organize the scholarship of others and format the result correctly). College term papers are just a slightly more grown up version of high school book reports.

The people who use these evaluations (employers, graduate schools, awarders of scholarships et al.) are largely driven by convenience as well. They usually want a simple number (maybe with a vague letter of reference thrown in, replete with boilerplate phrases) rather than a detailed view of the applicant’s abilities.

Ironically the students who write the best term papers go on to become teachers — a skill almost completely different from test-tube writing. And the cycle goes round and round.

Colleges don’t measure or certify what students have learned. A successful transcript simply shows that someone has colored within the lines. What you learn in college is (ideally) how to continue learning after graduation (what Gregory Bateson calls deutero-learning) and how to apply what you have learned creatively and productively.