[blackkettle]

There area a number of comments in this thread similar to yours on the topic of university as an 'experience'. I started my undergrad degree in 1999, and I think that was very much the case at that time as well. It was the same for the dorm community that is mentioned as another reason in other comments.

All of that was pretty similar then, and this was when UC tuition was still very, very reasonable.

The main difference, maybe, was that at that time the experience was less controlled, and less managed. The dorm I lived in first year was run by fourth year undergrads and grad students, and their responsibility was basically to make sure that no one was opening vodka bottles in the common room, or setting off smoke detectors with bongs or puking in the elevator. They were compensated with free or heavily reduced room and board.

The experience was less controlled and less micro managed across all aspects of university life at that time, and even more so prior. My admittedly unsubstantiated viewpoint is that the proliferation of control mechanisms, and transition of traditionally subsidized experience management to formal salaried roles is a big contributor to the unnecessary increase in bureaucracy, and it has a negative long term effect on learning from both the academic and the 'experience' side of things.