In some universities (my experience is with European state funded universities) the effective goal might not even be to teach at all. Rather, the effective purp

In some universities (my experience is with European state funded universities) the effective goal might not even be to teach at all. Rather, the effective purpose is to function as a filter so that individuals with beneficial circumstances (whether it be talent, time, or being well prepared) can get good grades/credentials and others simply fail. Generally, there is little unstructured interaction between students and instructors. One point in defence of this is, the skill/knowledge that is effectively trained is "how to learn", rather than specific courses and subjects.