What are you expected to learn from a master's program?

When you see someone has achieved a masters level of education on their resume is it not reasonable to assume that they have been exposed to seminar discussions, term papers, and some public speaking? The ultimate goal is to be able to think critically and this traditionally how it's been taught.

I recently took a grad level class from one of the online only programs at my school (this is a tier 1 university) and the entire course consisted of reading long articles and then answering multiple choice questions from the articles. They were all just recall questions too. It was like a throwback to undergrad or even high school level of teaching and not the good classes from those schools either.

The next semester I was in an in person class with a few students who were from this online program and they were unfamiliar with how the seminar style classes worked or even how to make and defend a thesis. These were people who were in their last semester of grad school too. At the end of the day we all have the same "MA" on our resumes. So what does a master's degree truly mean?