[InclinedPlane]

Several factors are important here:

Degeneration of K-12 education. College freshmen have to spend significant effort (up to 1-2 years on average I'd guess) just getting caught up to levels of basic mastery of reading, writing, logic, and mathematics that they should have had as a HS graduate.

Increasing concentration on volume of "material" rather than on level of mastery.

As the college loan bubble and the increasing reliance on a college degree as a necessary credential for most white collar work colleges have shifted towards becoming degree mills. More and more students are valuing the credential more than the knowledge, and they are pumping huge amounts of money into the system sustaining those values. This necessarily warps the institutions of higher education. And as they struggle with ways to soak up massive influxes of tuition without throwing their integrity out the window (or losing their accreditation) they've increasingly fallen back on volume and intensity of course work in lieu of demonstration of mastery of knowledge.