In contrast to many comments, I had a great time studying. Sure, the staff didn't have great teaching skills (classical prof with an unruly hairdo reading from the syllabus in a large hall), but after the first year, classes became smaller and teaching was --while not passionate-- certainly inspired in many cases. It was a period in which students could still pick an academic topic and write a (small) thesis for graduation, or do some internship and write a report about that. I had a supervisor who was into some of the newer stuff and gave me practically free reign with regular feedback.
That was in 80s. I stuck around, changed faculty (AI, cogsci, neuro), and saw university change. It became very financially oriented. The number of students kept rising, norms kept dropping (2nd year student asking: what does this symbol √ mean?), students participating in real research became rarer and rarer, even PhDs shifted towards more and more teaching, and 20 years later, the most influential member of a university's board was the one doing real estate, and an academic career was based on the amount of funding obtained.
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