I'm rather enjoying university right now and the lifestyle I have and am perfectly fine taking the scenic route. I learn plenty on my own and basically consider it a semi retirement stage :-)
I never had massive amounts of free time at college. Maintaining a 3.9 in Computer Science without having the same amount of raw talent (and previous experience) as your peers is really hard, so I had to work my ass off. My schedule was close to 16 hours per day, 7 days per week (including classes). It was "Hell Week" for the ~4 years I was there. I worried my family and friends. It was unhealthy.
Trying to keep up with, frankly, __smarter__ (and, most likely, more intelligent) peers was a real challenge. I tried "Studying Smarter, not Harder", but lacked the skills from K-12 education to do so. Attending classes on "How to Study" and the like really didn't help and, no matter what I tried, I always fell back into investing more time as a solution.
I lacked the bio-hardware (read: brains) to go into Computer Science. I did it anyway. Don't forget about people like me!
> Life is good at this time
No, it wasn't. Not for me.
> Those of us with jobs and families snicker at college students who claim to be "so busy".
I don't. I have more free time now that I'm married and working (a stable and well-paying job, thankfully).
It might be good adding this to their courses. (And before reaching University would be even better. :))
The problem with allowing the students to take all the courses they want is that some of them can't correctly measure how much work they can handle. So you will get horror stories like: "A student get enrolled in 3 times the expected courses, has too many homework, too many midterms the same week, and finally don't approve any of them."
Now we have a lost of students that come with questions like "I didn't approve Calculus I last semester. Can I enroll in Algebra I, Calculus I and Calculus II, so I don't lose a semester?" And it is hard to tell them, but most of the times the best thing is to take only "Algebra I" and approve that than taking the three classes and approving none of them.
I also understand that there are special cases, but should be evaluated case by case.