Some courses are just hard because the concepts are hard. If you're not down to clown, you're not going to make it past it.

Some courses are deliberate obstacles. The degree program at the university I attended had a single course that essentially pivoted you from the 200 level courses to the 300 level courses. It was always full due to it being a requirement and having a high failure rate necessitating people to retake it multiple times.

I never got a chance to take it because I ran out of lower level courses and electives to take to maintain full time status. Without full time status, I couldn't maintain my financial aid. Without my financial aid, I couldn't afford college.

A couple of years later, the program was restructured and the "pivot" was removed. As was other bullshit one was forced to take. If I had started the program a year later, I could have actually completed it. Or if I could have just taken the class. I never struggled with the material.

These two are largely diametrically opposed.

- Any professor bringing in significant grant money is at an R1 school.

- R1 schools are famous for bad teaching by the tenured faculty, largely because quality teaching doesn’t gain them much.

- Quality teaching can be found, often in abundance, at small colleges. Some of these colleges do not have weeder courses. There are some serious students at these colleges. These are the rare exceptions, imho.