My philosophy professors actually did the opposite; the page limits were upper bounds, not lower bounds, and they were always incredibly tight. You might have 5 pages to cover what would reasonably take you 8, and if you went over the limit they'd just stop reading and cross out the rest for you. I guess that only works if you have students who care about what they're writing enough to actually want to try to put in real content, but the forced conciseness helped make me a much better, clearer writer.