[wisty]

You are too charitable. I think it's a medieval tradition, dating back to the days when lecturers were real authorities on the courses they were teaching.

I'm not saying that lecturers are no longer competent at the stuff they teach, or that they aren't great authorities on something, but they don't have the edge that they used to.

If you want to understand the cutting edge of a field, you go to conferences, and listen to top researchers talking about their field. Perhaps that's what undergraduate lecturers used to be. But research gets more specialized and eclectic every year, while the foundations become more firmly bedded down.

Undergrad education is mostly a solved problem. Courses don't change much from year to year, except the useless faddish ones. New research gradually seeps down, but it's rare that you need an expert to bring it all together.

[pnathan]

I'm speaking from experience.

edit:

I was a TA for early CS classes. Sometimes we took attendance, sometimes we didn't. When we did, more people showed up, and more people passed. Teachers have a responsibility to teach both sides of the bell curve, and generally pressuring people to learn helps the lower side pass. I understand that it's kind of old fashioned and authoritarian from the perspective of a top student, but it really winds up better for the bottom students in general.