[gajomi]

>I don't know anyone who doesn't read the textbooks >Not in STEM not anywhere else

I would almost never "read" (though I would occasionally reference, page by page) the textbooks in core STEM classes when I was in college. The most important thing was always the notes and making sure you could work through exercises. And this only became more true at advanced levels, when oftentimes there isn't any textbook available. At least in the physicsy/mathy realms I belonged to, the information density of your typical lecture was such that a semester should be easily compressible to a dozen pages of typed notes. But that isn't to say, I don't think, that it wasn't difficult!

>Man, I wish I went to uni in the US. Every time I hear anything about the US college experience it just sounds like a piece of cake.

There is some truth behind what you are hearing, but it is quite far from the whole truth. In contrast to many European university systems (at least the ones I am familiar with) there is a lot of time purposefully built in to take courses in different areas and build up "perspective". So if you want to take it easy you can take some bullshit classes and just coast. Or you can take interesting classes which might be challenging. The variation in student experience can be quite large. If you go to a top school, however, you can expect to be surrounded by a bunch of competitive types who are quite good at what they do, and making good in this environment would certainly not be a piece of cake.

[nmrm]

> the information density of your typical lecture was such that a semester should be easily compressible to a dozen pages of typed notes. But that isn't to say, I don't think, that it wasn't difficult!

Oh how true!

> Or you can take interesting classes which might be challenging.

Yes. With flexibility comes the possibility of abuse. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

I had quite a large humanities load in undergrad (majored in STEM fields, but with a BA), and purposefully took in-major, junior and senior level courses in art, English and history. There were pre-reqs but most instructors would waive them because the classes never filled. Others decided to take 100-level communications and business electives to fill the same elective slots. Even after taking graduate-level STEM courses, a junior-level art history course remains the most difficult course I've ever taken. The way the course was taught was a pretty intense combination of "right" and "left" brain thinking.

In retrospect, forcing students to choose to challenge themselves (or not) is probably the single best way to prepare students for the "real world", and probably not a bad predictor at success either.