"Having said that, isn't that true for any other degree? In the end, it's not the degree that matters, but the person." Yes, definitely -- there are a lot of c

"Having said that, isn't that true for any other degree? In the end, it's not the degree that matters, but the person." Yes, definitely -- there are a lot of cultures that place more value on the degree than on anything else, and these are cultures that emphasize rote learning and memorization. Rote learning and memorization are worthless in the long run, since the avoid training you to think for yourself and actually USE the information you've crammed into your head, but it's also a lot easier to teach by telling your students to memorize things than to think. I ran into exactly the same thing in biology, and a close friend of mine ran into it in medical school. He told me about some of the explanations that his med school compatriots offered up -- they demonstrated a glaring lack of understanding of basic physics and chemistry (we're talking high school stuff, not even college level knowledge here).