> Do you think upper division college classes are somehow like high school classes with well developed curriculum and teaching professors who teach the same thing every quarter?

I repeatedly said "standard course", which implies it is a commonly taught course (be it upper or lower division). In my undergrad, Analysis I, II and Abstract Algebra I, II were upper division courses. In the engineering departments, stuff like Electromagnetics I, II were upper division.

Anything that is not an elective (and even some popular electives) were standard courses.

Now I'll grant that in CS, some material like machine learning changes rapidly. But in most engineering, very little in the undergrad material changes. Even my semiconductor courses in undergrad haven't changed much in decades.

So yes - for most of those classes (and that means the vast majority of undergrad engineering) classes, the curriculum is relatively standard.

> Now you expect the professor to not only come up with new test material, but also extensively calibrate it before students take it, maybe for a 15-hour per week class (3 hours of teaching + 12 hours of studying), with maybe 15 students?

First: In my very average undergrad university, professors were always careful not to reuse old homeworks/exams. It wasn't a huge burden. Professors who don't do this (e.g. most professors in top universities) signal very clearly their lack of interest in pedagogy.

Second: You want to do a curve on <= 15 students? Are you aware of basic statistics and the problems you get with small N? Are they using a normal distribution or one that is more appropriate for small N?

And as I already said, for a lot of electives where the material isn't standardized, professors lean towards lenient grading. They offer those classes because they want people to take it, and grading via a curve discourages it.

> since you mentioned an Intro to Analysis course

That was an upper division course. Yes, I know some universities have it as a lower division, but many (most in the US?) treat it as upper division.

> BUT these are also usually weed out classes, with the idea that they only have N spots for students to proceed on to the upper division course, so curving serves an actual purpose that is aligned with the intended result.

It was not a weed out course. Neither my undergrad nor grad math departments had weed out classes. I saw that concept only in the engineering departments. My EE department had only Circuits I, Circuits II and digital logic as "lower division". Circuits II was the weed out course, and you were not allowed to take anything else (e.g. E&M, Electronics, etc) unless you got a B or higher.