I have to agree 100% with what you're saying. In England unless you're attending one of the elite universities your goal will be to recite what you have been lectured to pass your coursework and exams, never to actually learn the stuff. My university has watered down my education to the point where students actually look outside of university to learn what they feel they need to succeed in life. As a result of this my summer placement has possibly caused me to fail my second year, in classes that in the real world I have excelled at. In what world can someone who has built commercial, running software for a company with a yearly revenue of $22M fail a database assignment for doing something differently?

In the same vein as you I went to university to be challenged, only to find that I am being restricted and limited in what I can do. I studied Computer Science in order to learn about what powers technology and how people have shaped our future, only to find that I am being taught trade skills in order to get me a typical code monkey job. Even for my own studies I have read many of the great texts, only to find that my answers are "wrong" because a different book the lecturers like expresses it in a different way. Hell, I've written complex PHP scripts to handle JSON for data projects only to be offered less marks than poorer projects because they use XML, the taught standard on my course.

University is the greatest scam in human history. Any student at a university is a paying customer and in my eyes if a student isn't provided a real education they should be entitled to their money back. If only there was a "Consumerist" for university students…