Dumbing it Down

For what seems like the umpteenth time in my college career (I mostly just wanted to use the word umpteenth, it was really more like 3rd or 4th) I was told this week to dumb down something I wrote for school. Heaven forbid we use words with more than five letters. I should note that this one actually had a little more of a point than some of the other ones. The other ones didn't have much of an argument at all.
The first time, I was told by an economics major (which leaves some question about his english skills) that my paper was too complex. Before I handed it in, I had asked a couple high school english teacher, who I respect as being very knowledgeable, to look over my paper. The made a few edits, but really liked it. Maybe I should have talked about stocks a little more.
The second time was with a writing fellow. I had to write a paper about philosophy (Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica to be exact) for a humanities class. I was required to look over it with a writing fellow who told me that it was too wordy and complex. I tried to explain to her that I understood the concept of writing for a specific audience, and that my audience was a man who never used a small word if he knew a big one for it. I also had to explain what it was even about since she didn't really follow any philosophy, and then I tried to explain to her that the people we respect as really good writers (I used Ralph Waldo Emerson as an example) used big words, so if we want good writers, maybe we should use good words. She said, "Yeah, but that's poetry." I had to point out that Emerson wrote many things besides poetry. I gave up trying to convince her, but didn't take her advice.
This time, I wrote a news article about venture capitalism, and was told that I needed to dumb it down. I'll cut her a break and say that there was some clarification I needed to do, but if you want a good newspaper, shouldn't you have good words and sentences? If we're concerned people won't understand something, I say that's a valid concern, but if it's a word like "capital," and they don't know what it is, perhaps we should leave it in, and let them go look it up.