> That is certainly a factor, and there is also an emphasis more on the mathematical proofs of algorithms than applications in such courses.

Proofs are great if you learn to write your own, but courses mostly just wants you to memorize proofs which isn't terribly useful. If your tests has a lot of problems where you need to write your own proofs then it is a pretty good course, but the normal case is that the test wants you to write down proofs from memory.