Is There A Disconnect Between High Schools And Colleges?

There is something that has been bugging me for the past few months. Ever since I started attending college a year-and-a-half ago I have constantly had professors skip over pieces such as Beethoven's Fifth, Beethoven's Ninth, Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc. etc. etc. Their reasoning for this is always "We have all heard, played, and analyzed these before in high school, no point going over it again." But here's the problem, we didn't; or at least I didn't. In high school I was always told that we didn't play pieces such as that because that is what we would do in college, so we always played obscure pieces in high school, now we play obscure pieces in college because we supposedly already played all of these standards. 

So, is this just me going to weird schools? Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a disconnect between the school systems? Between generations? Or what?

I can't speak for all of your professors (since I dont know them or what university you are attending) but a common reason why they would skip some of the more common pieces like that is that they are also trying to expand your classical music knowledge beyond the standard the well known pieces. 

Another reason is that those pieces dont fit into the lesson. Beethoven's Ninth isnt the kind of piece one causally analyzes, one could spend months in class going through that piece. Other pieces like Beethoven's Fifth is simple harmonically but makes for a great lesson on form which are usually left for third year students. 

As far as the disconnect between between high school and college music, yeah its rather big. High School does not prepare a student for college music.

^^What he said!

high school is utter and complete bollocks, you could honestly skip the whole thing and do fine in college, don't worry about it