I agree. Life is not a two hour exam. Rote memorization is pointless, as any engineer will tell you. You always have the ability to go look something up for two reasons: 1) it frees up your mind to think about implementation and the bigger picture and 2) you won't have the problem of misremembering something. Sure, your mind naturally remembers stuff that you use or are exposed to on a regular basis but you can't force it to remember something that you don't use. When I was a TA, I would see engineering students that aced a test but couldn't design, build, and demonstrate a project to save their life and vice versa. Which one would YOU hire? To this day, I'm baffled by universities requirements for doctoral candidates for engineering. You have to take this qualifying exam that essentially expects you to have remembered ever course you ever took from freshman year. So what? That sure as hell doesn't make them a better teacher. It's the ones who have worked outside of academia that make the best professors. It's like taking martial arts classes. Ooo, look, you can do all these "forms" but you can't defend yourself in a street fight.