I think you’re right and especially in regards to abstract concepts like linear algebra I don’t know anyone serious about learning who didn’t struggle with what turned out to be relatively simple things when viewed intuitively.

The problem as I see it

1. Professors themselves don’t understand it and are regurgitating pedagogy from books.

2. The material load is so high for your average bachelors degree you’d spend 8 years in school otherwise. I would hazard to say this is necessary and sufficient but schools wouldn’t get funding and our job oriented society would have it so then only the wealthiest could get education (like it was for centuries).

3. Tests are a benchmark and very expensive. You can consider a class’ total value to be loaded on the final exam. I recently wanted to go back to school casually. One of the cheapest universities available wanted 2600 dollars for a partial differential equations course. If I fail the course I lose 2600 dollars since I would need to retake it to proceed to higher mathematics. This alone does not allow a person time to explore - and that’s just one class!

4. Schools are simply a money laundering vehicle that takes money from students and moves it into administrator pockets. Education costs have skyrocketed yet education and pedagogy remains the same. This is money laundering by any other name.

- understanding leads intuition. There’s very little of either, anywhere.