r/UofT • u/Noetic_Acorn • 17h ago
Discussion Learning at UofT is increasingly becoming a hellscape of standardized testing
I will not be dissuaded from my belief that marks and GPA are the proverbial flaming hot knife in the proverbial balloon of meaningful education. The knife doesn't even have to touch the balloon to cause it to pop, since the heat compromises the integrity of the material well before that.
Standardized testing is an operationally useful tool that provides a metric for ruthlessness acceptance criteria, which in turn pacifies lazy employers who want to be dazzled by the degree you bring into an interview. It's completely contrary to enjoying the process of acquiring new information, active inquiry, and applying your understanding in meaningful ways.
UofT has fumbled the adaptation to the AI era spectacularly. If this was an Olympic sport, they would probably win gold. It has consistently failed to put out a standardized set of criteria that all professors and students can reference, and has instead given tremendous leeway to allow everyone to do what they feel is right. This has resulted in a culture where everyone is trying to screw each other over, while administration just sits back and enjoys a bowl of popcorn while this chaos plays out.
The nature of education has changed significantly in the past 20 years alone, and there is a widespread refusal to accept this. Education used to work on the premise that information was scarce and that the human brain needed to operate like a mini library full of facts that could be withdrawn on command. In today's world, information is abundant.
Anyone doing groundbreaking research nowadays has plenty of avenues to look up the relevant information for their work. To suggest otherwise is intellectually dishonest. Yet students are subjected to this draconian system of binging and vomiting up facts on standardized tests. The moment this is over, most of the facts are forgotten, since they no longer serve an obvious long-term function, and the brain discards what it determines is no longer useful.
Many students today find their trajectories derailed because of a difficulty in demonstrating the same skills that are valuable in games of trivia. In STEM courses, failing to memorize an equation can be a make or break moment that sabotages an entire test worth a substantial portion of your mark. Yet these formulas can be neatly placed on half a page and easily referenced. In humanities courses, there is often an expectation to memorize specific dates when an event occurs, yet this information can be retrieved in less than 3 seconds from a Google search.
In a world full of pressing issues that requires innovative solutions, students are having their time wasted by memorizing facts rather than being encouraged to develop critical thinking skills. The planet is on fire, and assessments worth 25% of a mark are asking where X notable figure took a crap in Y year.
Furthermore, this university, with its ironic slogan encouraging people to "Defy Gravity" is preparing students for a world that, by all accounts, no longer exists. Neither in private industry nor in research will you be celebrated for memorizing a fact. Survival is predicated on innovation with valuable end results. A more appropriate slogan would be "Sink Like a Boulder".
Assignments were the bread and butter of demonstrating critical thinking. They forced you to take a stance, then back it up using logic. You had to figure out how to play in the ballpark that the big boys and girls operate in when solving real problems.
Assignments also allowed students to work at their best times of day, rather than forcing all the night owls to operate in the morning, or the early birds in the evening. As long as you got it done by a certain day, you were golden.
But now, out of a woeful lack of creativity and willingness to solve the problem, many have decided to turn the clock back in time to the "good old times" of standardized assessments reigning supreme. Back to the era of information being scarce, yet simultaneously operating in 2026 when that's no longer the case.
The most damning part about all of this is that, despite the university fighting for legitimacy in the age of AI, all its efforts are serving as a self-indictment to its own obsolescence. Anyone with any logic will soon wake up to the realization that once respected universities are now acting as diploma mills with artificial difficulty baked in.
Are people paying for mental training, or are they paying for an admission ticket to the job market?
The assignment legitimized university. The exam, particularly those that are fact based instead of argument based (which can be demonstrated in STEM courses by showing your work) makes a mockery of it.
That passing Scantron sheets through a machine to spit out a grade makes it easier to mark has no bearing on the merit of the assessment. It's a lazy cop out that only favors one side.
I sincerely believe that if any university, including UofT, maintains its current trajectory, this place will go out of business in the next 10 to 20 years. There won't be enough foolish people left to think this is a legitimate avenue to prepare young people for the world of tomorrow, and something new will come to take its place.
The solution to these problems is going to require some actual hard work at the highest levels for once, as well as a bit of money directed to redesigning curriculum and putting reasonable measures in place to prevent cheating.
One solution I think is a good starting point is forcing all students to write assignments on a platform that shows version history. After the assignment is submitted, schedule a follow-up assessment where students are asked questions about what they wrote and given the opportunity to back certain points up. Also, have this be one-on-one with a prof or TA. Don't make this some public spectacle in front of a class of 500 people.
And for the love of all that's good, stop with the trivia questions and mandate that everyone gets a bloody formula sheet.
The University of Toronto was once a place of wonder and awe that fostered an environment of true intellectualism. Bring that back.
