grad school*

What's the point of going to school and taking classes if you end up forgetting the details of most of what you learn?

I think the answer isn't so much that:

learning these things, while not useful in and of itself, proves to a future employer that you are intelligent, hard-working, and capable

as much as:

learning these things gives you an idea of what's possible, so that when you come across future problems, you won't try to reinvent an inferior wheel; i.e. it gives you a catalogue of the state-of-the-art, which you can then reference for future googling purposes.

There are a bunch of examples of instances where:

1) a problem seems too complicated to have an elegant solution, but an elegant solution actually exists! (e.g. Kalman filtering) or

2) a problem seems so simple that a simple solution is implemented without much thought, when a more complex but much better solution exists. (e.g. string searching)

And so I find that what I've learned in grad school has thus far been incredibly useful, insomuch that I now know what to google, whereas before I might not have even bothered.

* this applies mostly to engineering, probably not so much to the liberal arts (but maybe?)