Future Leadership Was: US Military Dead during Iraq War 1816

A significant problem here is that the way a number of college courses are structured, learning and particularly understanding are orthogonal to the purpose.

Typical universities accept far more students than they can possibly educate and then engage in "weed out" courses which are cutthroat rote memorization marathons where education is peripheral to selection of the most ruthless "students."

In addition, even beyond that, far too many courses stress rote memorization of volatile "facts" at the expense of understanding and indeed it is often possible for students to graduate with high marks without understanding much of anything.

This is partly due to laziness (it is much harder to evaluate understanding than rote memorization). Standardized testing only reinforces this. We are told to trust standardized testing insbreastutes because they are self-appointed experts in standardized testing. Sounds like trusting Microsoft to be software experts.

An even larger influence at present is the corporate PHB mindset favoring JIT skills based "training" over education.

It is sad that we now have at least one full generation of teachers who came up under this system, and most of them have no idea how things work.

At least three teachers I knew in recent years have been sternly warned by administrators: "It doesn't matter if the students understand the material, you must cover the curriculum."