I have actually repeatedly heard the same complaint from professors. They don't want to read a bunch of 20 page papers when the standard in the field for (technical) publications is like 4. So they put maximum page limits on, which makes vastly more sense all around.

Maybe in philosophy it's necessary because the standard media is books or long essays so making sure you can play the "game of bullshitting" is a useful vocational skill in that field, to make your text long enough for people to buy your book.

No offense intended to philosophers, I love philosophy. But practical considerations like earning a living from a philosophy degree are perhaps different. It's kind of hard to sum up a new philosophical treatise in four pages since you'd probably take that long just to define your version of what "good" means.

My philosophy papers always had the most strict page limits. Try arguing against Nozick in 3 double spaced pages...

You should be able to make that case to your prof. You would probably get points for it :)

Some profs are subject matter experts who have no actual understanding of Pedagogy. So they pick up whatever rules someone else tells them to use, and then with time figure out what works and doesn't from feedback (which students are always very hesitant to give).

We had informal requirements (or better, "expectations") for the length of a PhD thesis (physics). It was about 200 pages.

Mine was a whooping 40 pages. Introduction to the subject was two sentences and the fact that if you need an introduction to the matter you should probably not be reading this thesis which deals with a super specialized area.

One of the reviewers refused to read it on the basis of the size. The four others looked relieved not to have to go though the history of physics again.

I hope that things are changing in this age of blogs and concerned information, the French idea of a thesis made of published articles and a few pages of glue is great.

One of the best and most challenging classes I took in university was a course on Old/Middle English lit where the professor required us to write a paper for each class (two classes per week) with a one page _limit_. It was fun and really hard.

The point of essay is arguments and making reader believe you. Of course you can answer question in one paragraph, but that is only part of point. Another one is to verbalise multiple arguments to support and deny your position.

Right, so "write an essay following X structure that's Y paragraphs long as defined by the structure" (eg three arguments for and one countered argument against, plus an intro and conclusion) is fine. "The paper must be at least 6 pages long" is not. I'd much rather read and write "this uses Mouse A rather than B because A was much cheaper for similar functionality" instead of "the reason for which the first discussed mouse, Mouse A, was chosen to be used in this project instead of the alternative, Mouse B, was due to a cost-benefit analysis. The first mouse performed various tasks at near or surpassing ability when compared to the outputs of Mouse B; with this, and the significant price discrepancy heavily in favor of Mouse A, it is clear that the minor detriments in functionality shown by Mouse A are easily outweighed by the the more potent upside of being notably less expensive than Mouse B."

You may notice that the second example is TERRIBLE writing: too many modifiers, uncomfortable sentence structure, repetition of full names instead of pronouns, uses and defines "cost benefit analysis" instead of... not doing that. But it's longer! Easier to fit that length minimum! If you intend to require a depth of argument or a number of pros and cons, say you'll grade on that.

1.) I have never seen essay about mouse selection. While possible, that would be purely exercise in structure. Structure exercises exists, but again rarely about topic like mouse selection. Just a bad match to format.

2.) The style of writing in your second example would not get you good grade in writing course. Simple as that, while long enough, it is not good enough.

Depth of argument is not contradictory to good sentence structure. Or to good overall structure. The essay is not actually graded on smartness of argument, but on whether you present them well.

And yes, writing courses focuse on writing elements of text. Just like programming assignement focuses on coding and less on your work being useful.

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What you did there is trying to hack writing assignment. It typically does not work, teachers are typically not that dumb. They would however simply call that "bad writing" or "did not put in effort" rather then flattering "hacking the text".