Technology

You're talking like my main man John Thorndike and his fundamental principles of learning.

The principle of Recency: Memory fades with time, skills and knowledge practiced in the distant past tend to be more difficult to recall than those practiced recently. This is why we review at the end of chapters, units, classes.

The principle of Exercise: What people mean when they say "practice makes perfect" though I take issue with that phraseology, when training instructor candidates I make sure to stress that one can learn to do something wrong. When I was in 7th grade, my band teacher handed me the all-county band audition music and told me to go learn it on my own. I took it home, misread the sheet music, and became adept at playing something that wasn't the assigned piece. I was not accepted to all-county band. "practice" requires a regulator, either a teacher or coach, or a student who has the means and ability to detect incorrect performance.

But who gives a shit? These college programs aren't about learning anything, they're about extracting money from young people.

The tests are designed to be crammed by students who are required to show up to lecture halls in pajama bottoms to listen to someone who has never worked outside an academic setting speak too fast. Learning is an active process, lecture halls encourage passive behavior, such lectures are almost entirely a waste of time. Professors know this, they know only their students who already give a shit are going to actually study, so they design their tests to be crammable otherwise UNC would have 3 graduates a decade. So students sit in a lecture hall almost falling asleep then they spend the last half of December and May cramming.

So why not do all the cramming back to back to back and graduate in 3 months? What's the point of stretching it to 4 years? Because universities have very lucrative housing and food service divisions.