Like some of the other posters, I think that restructuring tests to require more in the way of problem solving, and making factual information only part of a test question is the best way to make it less profitable for cheaters. Randomized tests are also a very good idea for when a test absolutely must be based on factual memorized information. I actually liked tests that required using what you’d learned instead of just regurgitating facts. It was a good feeling to know that what I just got through doing was at least a step above hoop-jumping and might actually be a decent analogue for something I might see in real life.
I can’t support the idea that a certain amount of memorization is useless. When I was still in high school I thought that memorizing things was pointless, that I’d be able to look up the information I needed if and when I needed it. I’ve changed my mind about that. Theory doesn’t count for squat without some specifics. If information were the only thing that mattered then there would be no need for schools, and any schmuck with the right reference manuals could do virtually any job around. That doesn’t seem to be the case, does it?
Intelligence is, in part, combining information in new ways to solve problems. It might be true that you can have high intelligence without a decent memory, in theory. In reality, though, if you don’t have the information in your mind that you need to solve a particular problem, you’re screwed. You at least need to be able to hold several different facts in mind at once, and you never know what little piece of formerly useless information might provide a clue or vital insight for figuring something out.
You also don’t always have access to information resources. There’s an apocryphal story I read about how a teacher asked one of his students to tell him the value of a constant during class.
The student replied, “If I need to know the value of X, I’ll just look it up.”
“You don’t have a way to look it up, do you?”
“No.”
“But you need to know the value of X right now. What are you going to do about it?”
It’s a smart-assed way of saying that facts may not always be important, but sometimes you need a fact immediately and might not have a way to find it out in time to solve the problem if you don’t just know it. People who are experts in a field, who are well respected, and get results usually know right off the top of their heads most of the information that they need to do their jobs. That’s what makes them better at what they do than someone in a different career.
I’ve got a natural bent for figuring out how things work, but without knowing all the facts, valid and dead-end approaches for problem solving, and all the different concepts an engineer learned during his education, I’d never be able to make much of anything very complicated, even if you gave me a whole pile of engineering manuals and a few months to make a stab at it. An engineer’s mental store of information is what makes him an engineer, not his innate talents.