This question is a bit more philosophical so feel free to remove if you like but it's been bugging me for the last 4 years!

As a final year student I find that exams can be often be passed with a couple of days of cramming, without necessarily retaining or understanding the content i.e. a regurgitation of lecture notes is often enough to gain high marks.

A friend of mine is about to graduate with an honours degree whose final year evaluation was based solely on practical work (a project, assignment marks and the creation of a poster) yet all of this work could have been completed by a third party.

Personally I don't think either of these methods of assessment is sufficient as I am currently on track for a 1st class honours in artificial intelligence and computer science and believe this is mostly due to my skill in passing exams not my skill as a programmer or my vast in depth knowledge of any of the subjects I have "studied".

Surely there is a better way to assess our skills - isn't there?