@kdfrawg I think, in this case, the professor just couldn't be bothered to come up with a separate assessment for the master's students (our class is mostly undergraduates), and so just decided to mark us more harshly.
Even for undergrad, though, 1500 feels quite short.
Another professor made it so that master's students have to negotiate a topic with him individually; the undergrads got a set question. But that's for a 4000-word assignment, so he may be being lazy, but not in terms of asking for stuff to read.