I don't really think that's the issue. I have a science degree, but getting it was to a certain extent an exercise in masochism.
Highlights of my college experience (probably 1/3 of the science courses I took might have had some kind of issue like these):
1. Exams filled with complex and abstract trick problems that differed substantially from assigned homework.
2. Professor who, when asked a minor question about something spent 30 minutes lecturing the class on 'RTFT,' as derived from 'RTFM.' Ironically, the confused student was likely the only one who had actually RTFT'd.
3. Lots of confusing, poorly described assignments. Sometimes assignments were so bad even the TAs had no idea what was going on.
4. Horrible textbooks, often written by departments to raise money rather than for quality or readability.
There's really a lot of room for improved instructional quality in my opinion.
Of course this was often compounded by the relatively poor quality of pre-college math and science education in K-12 public schools.
Students being overconfident and unprepared for anything but 'success' and mental transitions from 70-80-90/A-B-C traditional grading to schemes that are based on std deviations or content mastery can be uncomfortable, but I don't think that they're the root of most student's problems, though I do think some professors use such schemes to try and cover for their poor teaching.
Most academics don't want to be teachers. They became academics so that they could do research. Many see teaching as a nuisance that "pays the rent", so to speak, and do the absolute minimum in order to scrape by.
Some professors love to teach and everyone remembers them fondly. I had one professor who'd taught about 2/3rds of the courses at my university over the years. You could always tell he'd taught a course in the past because subsequent professors always retained the assignments he'd created -- they were just too good to replace.
It's interesting seeing the toll on the love-to-teach ones. My course in the mid-90s had a fantastic lecturer, my favourite by far, who loved teaching and researching. He'd be there 12 hours a day by default.
I went to see him again in the late noughties and he was haggard (not surprising, given he was around approaching 60 and always working heavily). He said he'd lost his spark to teach, and that current day students just weren't interested in doing the work - it's hard to be passionate when you're teaching uninterested people.
He said that my group's era was a great one for teaching. I accused him of blowing smoke up my arse and how bad could it be? These things are hard to make metrics of, but he gave the example - out of a course of 60 people in my final year, there were two applications for 'special consideration', one of whom was an eight-month-pregnant woman who didn't want to risk disturbing exams in case she went into labour. 'special consideration' was used for serious issues - close relative died, that kind of thing. By comparison, the current year had around half the students asking for special consideration.
He had other stories of change as well. I started a PhD under him (quit it early when I realised I would be relegated to academia) and we were treated as cattle by the department, mere cash-cows to bring in money. He mentioned that when he did his PhD in the 70s, doctoral students were considered gold and pretty much equivalent to a member of faculty. Now (late 90s) they're packed into an uncomfortable broom closet and their resources are, quite literally, commandeered by admin. As a literal example, we saw one doctoral student have her work stalled because the number crunching machine she had incoming was redirected to an admin temp.
There doesn't seem to be a good answer for this problem. The original model that the modern university emulates is that a nucleus of scholars in a location have drawn students to them, willing to learn.
These days it doesn't quite work like that; lots of kids are there to punch their ticket. Ticket-punchers aren't motivated to do any more than the minimum. So yes, perhaps I've overlooked the other half of the equation.
A friend of mine is a teacher and I moonlight as an Olympic-style weightlifting coach. I once enthused to him that I could see the allure of teaching. He sighed heavily, then pointed out that my trainees want to learn. Of course I enjoyed it.
I left knowing absolutely fuck all other than how to pass a test through cramming yet got a 1st. I didn't deserve it.
I spent 5 years the moment I hit industry relearning everything and fudging what I could with my then HP48 calculator which had a solver and equation library. It basically saved my arse.
My first job was to design and construct a prototype design for an instrumentation amplifier but we'd never even been taught how to lay shit out on a PCB.
Now I know what I'm doing but have bailed out into software as there is more demand, but I get the feeling my story is quite common.
Beyond all the other factors, this is the problem:
"My first job was to design and construct a prototype design for an instrumentation amplifier but we'd never even been taught how to lay shit out on a PCB."
University is mostly a pissing context between "PhD" that couldn't survive in the real world. And the tests are to assert their dominance (mostly)
I have an EE degree. The hobbyist magazine has taught me more about how to build a simple radio than said degree.
Not to mention mathematical models for some things are, let's say, weird.
Highlights of my college experience (probably 1/3 of the science courses I took might have had some kind of issue like these):
1. Exams filled with complex and abstract trick problems that differed substantially from assigned homework.
2. Professor who, when asked a minor question about something spent 30 minutes lecturing the class on 'RTFT,' as derived from 'RTFM.' Ironically, the confused student was likely the only one who had actually RTFT'd.
3. Lots of confusing, poorly described assignments. Sometimes assignments were so bad even the TAs had no idea what was going on.
4. Horrible textbooks, often written by departments to raise money rather than for quality or readability.
There's really a lot of room for improved instructional quality in my opinion.
Of course this was often compounded by the relatively poor quality of pre-college math and science education in K-12 public schools.
Students being overconfident and unprepared for anything but 'success' and mental transitions from 70-80-90/A-B-C traditional grading to schemes that are based on std deviations or content mastery can be uncomfortable, but I don't think that they're the root of most student's problems, though I do think some professors use such schemes to try and cover for their poor teaching.