Coincidentally I was thinking about this topic earlier today. It seems that we train students to write in the worst way possible, by giving arbitrary word counts as benchmark for completeness.

I suppose letting students turn in 3 sentence essays may not be a better option, but it at least it doesn't encourage students who engage with the assignment in good faith to turn a high-quality six paragraphs into six pages.

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bantunes an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The alternative is to "turn in a good paper" which is not quantifiable and thus anathema to the modern Taylorism inspired world of education. If the student can't agree, it's a problem and so word count it is - can't argue with basic math.

	▲	robotresearcher 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		False dichotomy. We’re smarter than that. There can be requirements like: - state the purpose of the paper - describe the context of the argument, and what the stakes are - state the argument and its implications - describe next directions Etc. You can even crudely apply these as a checklist. Of course you should supply it up front. Those of us who have had to grade papers don’t just go on vibes alone, you know.
	▲	nfw2 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There are still unquantifiable aspects of grading. Just turning in 1000 words or whatever doesn't guarantee an A, it's a bare minimum in a still-mostly-unquantifiable grading system.

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wavemode 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Having a well-defined rubric is better than having a minimum word count or page count. If they can meet all the rubric's requirements in 3 sentences then so be it.