There's another issue here as well: many people don't know how to do college, and they think that college is just about going to class and doing okay in class. It really isn't. Class, especially these days, is mostly an excuse to meet people, to figure out what you're interested in, and, in those subjects you are interested in, to signal that interest to your professor.

I'm a grad student, and I noticed these problems—which are essentially cultural—in many of my students, which in turn led me to write a couple essays on the subject: http://jseliger.com/essays . The essays attempt to turn implicit knowledge of the sort a lot of people acquire along the way, or acquire from their families (especially if they come from wealthy families) into explicit knowledge that says, "Here is how and why things work the way they do."