[esfandia]

Definitely, bad diagrams (as opposed to bad diagram notation) give UML a bad name. Your example of the misuse of state diagrams as a glorified flowchart is something I see very often.

Undergraduate students probably don't have the experience and design maturity to fully appreciate when and how to use most UML diagrams. I think you need to get stuck at design problems a few times before you can appreciate the need to capture ideas using the right diagram, and then you might be ready to adopt some standard so you can share your design decisions with others in a way that correctly captures and conveys just the right amount of detail.