In this context, time constraints are measured in hours and are very informative regarding the student’s capacity to prioritise, plan and carry out their work under pressure.

It is actually very informative when one person can

Agreed. Frankly test taking doesn't correlate to job performance well by any metric.

For example, get 90% on a test, that's applauded and earns a distinction. In a job context, 90% gets you fired. I don't want a worker who produces "90% well soldered boards". I don't want software that runs on "90% of our customers computers". Or a bug in every 10 lines of released code.

A test puts an arbitrary time limit on a task. In the real world time is seldom the goal. Correctness is more important. (Well, the mechanic was going to put all the wheel nuts on, but he ran out of time.)

College tests are largely a test of memory, not knowledge or understanding. "List the 7 layers of OSI in order." In the real world you can just Google it. Testing understanding is much harder to mark though, Testing memory is easy to set, easy to mark.

Some courses are moving away from timed tests, and more towards assignments through the year. That's a better measure (but alas also easier to cheat. )

I mean.. if you can finish a task for a client in a day, and someone else needs two days, isn't that a huge difference? Or to turn it around, if someone does 10%, 20%, 50% more in the same time period, isn't that significant?

I mean.. we are comparing students abilities here, and doing stuff fast is one of those abilities. Even potato peelers in a restaurant are valued more if they're faster, why not programmers too? Or DMV workers?