Ah, I see your point more clearly now.
Whilest in Abertay, I did attend about 95% of my lectures ( it snowed sometimes and it was a long walk… ). One of the main reason was the lecturers were good and showed a real interest in us and the course material was stimulating
In DCU, the class size was 100 over and I never even got to know a lecturer. It felt like the main job of the lecturers was to supply us with notes, go through them in lectures, that was about it, ( obviously some were better than others ).
In a way I agree with you about colleges wasting your time with something you can teach yourselve, but in a way I think a programming course almost requires that to happen. There’s only so much you can be taught with coding, unless you actually do it yourself, you won’t take it in. There’s got to be a compromise in there somewhere :)