That's just another part of what I'm complaining about: an indifference to providing a quality education. It can be done other ways, those ways would simply require time, energy, and resources. In short, they require the university being willing to make a commitment to education, which research universities are rarely willing to do.

I don't deny that some people learn well basically left to their own devices. However, to defend research universities in this way is enabling those universities to half-ass their primary purpose (specifically state schools, since you could argue that a private university has a different purpose).