I sympathize with your view, but I think the time pressure is a very valid thing to be using. If we view higher education as being more about learning how to l

I sympathize with your view, but I think the time pressure is a very valid thing to be using. If we view higher education as being more about learning how to learn, rather than simply mastering a set of facts, we have to have limited time resources to measure how effectively a student learns. In life, business, etc. we are almost always under time pressure. These tasks often include learning something - new facts, new concepts, new context. People who can make better decisions, produce higher quality results, etc. in limited time are precious. The time element of study time/test time is effective at measuring that.