Academic Mecca?

We're well into the semester here at the University of Ghana, but it sure doesn't feel like it. For starters, few students take doing homework seriously, and although I'd love to start reading for my classes, many departments have yet to finish photo-copying our reading materials. When we arrived to the school, I was initially frustrated at the fact that many parts of the campus, including our residence hall, were not done being cleaned and primped for the new school year. I was frustrated that it would take three weeks before someone would mow the grass around the library and that garbage still lays strewn across our beautiful, tropical campus. In the past few days, though, I've realized that universities and colleges here in Ghana, and probably in many other countries, are very different from American universities for one simple reason: business. On my first college interview at a small school in Erie, PA, the admissions representative asked me if I knew that college is a business, and I have to make myself look like a good investment to each school I apply to. It's totally not like that here in Ghana. Getting into college isn't nearly as competitive as it is in the US. Schools aren't competing with other schools, either, to attract more students and their money. The government pays for most of Ghana's students to study at the university level, and schools in turn welcome as many students as wish to study. A greater student body shows the rest of the nation, and the world, that Ghanaian students are ready to learn and compete with the rest of the world. I worry a little that with the education Ghanaian students receive from, at least, the University of Ghana, they may not be able to compete with graduates who have had a competitive mind-set about college from the get-go. Are American and European students more willing to sacrifice or go the extra mile to get the competitive edge over international students? I fear, just a little, that that might be the case.
Sometimes I miss neatly manicured hedges and bright green grass that is used to attract students to schools. But now I'm learning to appreciate the basics of school: namely, the academic level to which I am exposed. Several students study here from other African countries because of it's outstanding level of academic rigor. That was hard to believe, since I've been to several classes since the semester has started, and have only had a few lectures to learn from. The learning style is much different and certainly not as creative as in the United States. Here, we are dictated notes which we will regurgitate at the end of the semester in the form of an exam. We've taken active learning approaches to acquiring knowledge. Lecture-based classes are becoming a rarity at my small SUNY school, and taking example from films, poetry, and other media has become more common and much more enjoyable. But then again, are we really expanding the way we can learn, or are we forgetting that school is just a place to get a bare-bones education, and it's our responsibility to supplement our book knowledge with life experiences? I don't know. I'm sure we'll figure it out.