If you folks don't mind (and even if you do ), I'm going to relate his back to a case of bad popularized theology.

Back when universities started, ~ 13th century +/-, the concept of the Great Chain of Being was pretty much a "given" in the West. A university education was designed to bring out the skills necessary for gentlemen and clerics to fulfill their role in life. Certainly by the 17th century, a university education was, probably, the fastest route out of your birth rank and into the upper middle classes (aka the bureaucracy or <shudder> becoming a lawyer </shudder>). The system was designed to be hard, especially on those from families who were not of the right class and upbringing (don't speak Latin? Don't bother applying!).

While this class based system was eroded in he 1920's and 30's, the death knell was after WW II, especially in North America. The theology inherent in the Great Chain of Being was still present, in the collective unconscious as it were (i.e. degree = white collar job), but the old Protestant Ethic (and Catholic vocation) components were missing as they were, and are, in most of modern society.

Penta is, understandably, angry and, while I have a lot of agreement with Steve M's position of "suck it up", it just doesn't do much good to say that without talking a bit about the system that makes it that way. Selil noted that he works his students hard - so do I. One of the greatest personal moments for me as a teacher was having a student I failed in a course thanking me for failing him - not something you hear every day, and certainly not PC!

If we look at the way the university system is structured, at least in Canada, profs get slammed if they have high failure rates before they get tenure. Class sizes are increasingly large (I've taught classes of over 450 students), and the skills required for a class that size have less to do with education than with entertainment .

The reality is that, as far as a university education is concerned, you get out of it what you put into it IFF you realize that you must educate yourself. Some of your profs will be glad to help you with that process, but many are swamped and others, I'm sorry to say, just don't give a rats' posterior. The "trick" that I used and I encourage my students to use is simple - talk to your profs, find out the ones who do care and ask them for their advice. Or, to put it another way, find yourself one or more rabbi's (mentors) - tag into their personal networks, pick their brains and create the education you should be getting.