I feel the complete opposite for my courses in mechanical engineering. The teachers really worked at it and I still use the text books to this day. It wasn't all about the lectures themselves but how they taught us to think which has become invaluable. For me college wasn't about the courses, but the curriculum which was really the value added experience.
Something like computer science may be learned strictly from reading but this isn't universal. Gates argument is course specific.
I like to daydream about a scenario like yours, but by and large it's an exception to the rule, and one that is even most frustrating in light of high education costs.
It really depends on where you go and what you do. At most big public schools, I suspect the "TAs do everything / uninterested faculty" is the norm, chiefly because the faculty are rewarded for research, not teaching. If you go to liberal arts colleges (I went to Clark University: http://www.clarku.edu) and engineering schools like Harvey Mudd, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, etc., then undergrads are the focus, professors are rewarded for teaching, and you're more likely to have a better and in-depth experience.
Yes, I should have made that clear. Almost all of my academic career was at large research schools. A number of my fellow grad students instead went on to smaller schools where they are fairly happy teaching more and researching / publishing less. Without very many (or any) grad students to be TAs, they end up covering all the bases on their classes. In smaller departments, they tend to own all their classes year after year rather than rotating.
The classes are also smaller, which helps tremendously. At one point, I actually took a differential equations class at a junior college. We had 5 students. It was a great setting in an unexpected place.
