Nail on the head. Is the institution trying to ensure that you truly understand the material, or ensure that you have the capability to truly understand the ma

Nail on the head. Is the institution trying to ensure that you truly understand the material, or ensure that you have the capability to truly understand the material based on a limited set of inputs? This is not a sarcastic, negative or rhetorical question - there is of course the possibility that the profs are lazy and all that, but that's not what I'm implying with this. The latter is a skill that is indeed valuable, but my general assumption is that the goal of a university course more closely aligns with the former. If you want students to understand the material, it's a damn slippery slope to try to restrict them from any material they can get their hands on, including teacher's versions of textbooks and old tests. Measuring understanding is hard, in part because people will always try to cheat the system. But part of the reason I paid exorbitant amounts for tuition is that I expect the institution to figure out how to do it, so that the proof they provide that I understand the material has value and actually means something.