Learning can only happen with active studying. Nobody can push the knowledge into your brain. All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.

Actually, the functionality of medical care does depend on the actions of the patient to do what the medical system instructs them to do. When a person doesn't follow doctor's orders, there is a high possibility that the person in need of medical care doesn't actually get the results they expect.

> All you are offered is the chance to learn, and no guarantees of graduating if you turn out to be incompetent at it.

While I agree with your sentiment and the principle of what you're suggesting, most universities aren't packaging it like this. When you see the ads and you read their propaganda... er, I mean their pretty glossy brochures, they are selling it as exactly that: "Come to XU, get a degree in Y, our graduates have a 100% career placement success." "Get a degree in X, the best value in the country, no other University offers our graduation statistics." They might as well be a play by play from the consumer manipulation handbook. So I can't blame students for playing it both ways. I don't think students are stupid at all, I'm sure many of them know that they're not actually buying the degree, but they're all too well versed in how the media is being used to manipulate things to their own ends, and the student playing dumb to that manipulation and using it to their own ends is a classic example of using the University's own tactics against them.

This is exactly how it works. It's called a "postcode lottery" here.

> Education is as necessary as a public utility

Of course it must be free. But when it's not, you're not paying for a product, you're only paying for a chance to learn.

> actually knowing things about the world

It's 100% a students responsibility to learn. Schools can only provide with an access to an infrastructure (and this is what tuition fees are for) and a little, non-intrusive guidance.

Nobody can force the students to learn anything. Nobody can forcefully stuff the knowledge into them. It just does not work this way, and it does not matter how much you do not like it. It's a direct consequence of the human nature.

And most definitely, a degree is not a "product". It's a luxury to be earned, not something "guaranteed".

More students means more money.

So it's not just students who feel entitled. There's been a trend for years now of bullshit fill-up-the-hall "academic" courses with limited job prospects which only exist to part students from their cash.

Of course the real picture is more complicated. On the minus side there are expenses, but on the plus side many departments hoover up astonishing sums in national and sometimes corporate research funding.

The bottom line is that universities sweat students and lecturers and researchers for cash, and could afford to be more generous with everyone.