> If your grading is based mostly on correctly reproducing facts and applying algorithms you memorized then that’s the outcome your education system optimizes for

My favorite college class was compilers.

The whole semester you worked on a compiler for a simplified Pascal. Each homework added a feature.

The final exam was 4 hours. Open textbook, open internet. No chat with classmates. You got a description of 3 features to add to your compiler. Grade is number of tests passed.

Fantastic way to teach understanding.

My uni claimed grading was something like:

~ 40% bookwork. Rote learned facts ~ 30% standard questions. Do in an exam hall standard variants of what was done in class/homework/tutorials. ~ 30% New applications and logical extensions.

I don't know how well they achieved that split, I suspect it was mostly aspirational. Seemed like a reasonable ideal though!