You're close, but think about incentives rather than offense. Think about it more from the perspective of the lecturer. What are your incentives here? An easy c

You're close, but think about incentives rather than offense. Think about it more from the perspective of the lecturer. What are your incentives here? An easy class will net you a high pass rate, good reviews from your students, easier office hours, less to prepare for lectures. A hard class will net you a low pass rate, bad reviews, irate students (and maybe parents) beating down your door, and takes a long time to prepare. The incentive structure for lecturers is weighed very heavily towards easy classes. The only way to counteract this is for the entire institution to take pride in being difficult and create a culture where students value that difficulty as much as the institution does. That takes a heck of a lot of effort and prestige: Harvard, Oxbridge, Stanford, these are the sort of schools that can make such things happen. SJSU? Not so much. This is not to say SJSU isn't a good school. It actually is a good school with good staff. It's just very hard to stop things going out of alignment.