Interesting piece the other week from some distant superprof about the importance to modern education of 'defined learning outcomes' - just another irritating twig on the thicket of bureaucracy which increasingly surrounds any attempt at education.
When I was an undergraduate, my university suffered from what would now be considered a catastrophic shortage of course documentation. The first spasm of my history degree had the memorable syllabus: 'English history from the beginnings to 1330'. This was comparatively loquacious. Later chunks just had two dates.
I did not encounter a booklist until I got to what was called the 'documents paper' in which you were explicitly expected to use only primary sources. Each of the choices offered had a booklist and I simply chose the smallest list. This was a mistake. The list went 'Costin and Watson: Documents on the Law and Working of the Constitution. The whole'.
'The whole' turned out to be two hardback volumes, designed not so much as doorstops as for a small role in Stonehenge. The only part of the course which had a textbook was a special subject on the Admiralty's part in the War of the Second Coalition (highlights: Nelson at the Nile and Napoleon at Marengo) and this was an accident.
The book was very popular with students, less so with the people teaching the course. They intended at the first opportunity to restore its textbook-free status by changing to another war.
The written description of the whole degree could be found in a little leaflet of the size you might find with a kitchen appliance.
Well we have changed all that. Nowadays a serious degree course requires a slab of documentation on the scale of Messrs Costin and Watson's opus. Few teachers have read it all; fewer students have read any of it. Each segment of the degree offered must have objectives, content, modes of tuition, assessment methods and, of course, a booklist. The 'expected learning outcomes' are just another brick in the wall.