Maybe it's graded on a curve, so you just have to beat the median.
Or hope you're luckily a "C" student.
It is a bit ironic that liberal arts students have to have demonstrated competency, while engineering students who will go on to build things your life depends on just have to do better than other students.
it better represents reality, at your job you also don't have some objective measure you're being evaluated against. you just have to do well enough not to get fired
It hinges on:
1) Things going exactly as they do in the past.
2) The student being chosen.
3) The student remembering the keys.
4) The instructor not getting suspicious (it was brought up in the post)
5) The instructor never seeing the paper.
What do they even teach these kids, lol. Seems it would only ever work in a perfect world.