I think both you and I agree on how these kinds of things lie at the root of a big problem with many formal design programs.
When I was in design school, we had similar design assignments. None of those problems focused on practical considerations or production issues. It was almost always about designing the coolest layouts that met with the approval of the instructor who, as often as not, had little practical experience designing the very things he was instructing his students on how to design.
I have mixed feelings on how big of a problem this is. I think schools should concentrate more on practical matters, but I’m unsure how far they should move in this direction and whether or not it can and should be done concurrently with learning the principles of design and getting a good grip on more aesthetic matters.
Perhaps learning about safeties, dot gain, spine creep, and other professional essentials are things that should come after the student has some experience in designing layouts where those technical issues have more immediate relevance and meaning.
Even so, I’m pretty sure that much has to do with the instructors often not being entirely familiar with these issues themselves. But maybe this is similar to high school science teachers not really being professional scientists. Instead, they’re professional educators with enough knowledge about science to teach secondary-level education students the basics. In other words, their primary skill is teaching, not science.
In university design programs, perhaps these more practical matters are mostly left to be learned on the job, through experience in working with more experienced professionals instead of professional teachers.
In research universities, it’s the graduate programs in STEM fields, where students are expected to work directly with professional scientists, engineer and researchers to gain this kind of professional knowledge. Nothing like this approach exists in graphic design graduate programs. Instead, it’s typically more of the same — academic detachment from the real world and focusing more on aesthetic and artistic coolness.
If I were designing a design graduate program, I think I’d staff the faculty almost entirely with skilled, experienced professional designers coming from various backgrounds. I don’t see that happening, though. For that matter, I pessimistically see the field increasingly being dumbed down even further by the proliferation of self-directed online classes churning out students who are largely unprepared for much of anything.
Now I’ve really veered off-topic — sorry, Dr.Dude.