Do exams take away crucial knowledge needed....

[sanantone]

Who gets used to it? The 26% that make it through. (86% of all high school graduates START college. 26% will graduate) Who goes to grad school? 13%. Have only 13% of the Americans "learned" English?
When did you last send a business letter in APA or MLA? Puh-leeze.
I've always stood in the same arena, college is a credential. Jump through the hoops to get the piece of paper. If you can avoid crap, do so. If you can avoid spending extra money, do so. If you can avoid dealing with teachers, do so. I promise you, bullpoo like punitive teaching absolutely 100% causes students to drop classes. The resilient 26% are just the people that have figured it out and are doing it anyway. I don't think learning is EVER part of it.

Actually, there is what's considered proper formatting and etiquette for business correspondence. That's why colleges have business writing courses. People in clerical jobs need to know how to properly format documents and most of them don't need a degree. Paralegals need to know how to format legal documents and they don't need a degree either. When I worked in security, we had to properly format our daily activity and incident reports because they could one day end up in a courtroom and they were also reviewed by the client. Security officers definitely don't need a college degree. Unfortunately, most people in security neither write well nor know how to follow directions which made my job as a supervisor that more difficult. Police officers learn proper report writing which goes beyond content and most police departments require an associates degree or less.

There is proper formatting for personal letters which is probably becoming a lost art with the advent of texting and email, but properly formatting business emails is important. We have to properly format addresses on envelopes when we send mail. There are variations for how one can write up a cover letter, thank you letter after an interview, CVs, and resumes. However, there are plenty of standard rules for those too. There are even unofficial rules for how one is supposed to post on the internet such as not writing in all caps, not choosing bright colors that are hard to read, and splitting up long posts into paragraphs. I'm not even getting into the formatting that should be done for spreadsheets, PowerPoint Presentations, and Access databases that make life easier. So, yes, we have to get used to following directions when it comes to formatting documents. Sorry