One of the issues is that many theologians express their ideas in terms of philosophical concepts and vocabulary that are unfamiliar if you haven't studied that school of philosophy. Consider the early theologians who developed the doctrines of the Trinity and of orthodox Christology. They speak of the relationship between "substance", "person", and "nature" (or, rather, the Greek and Latin counterparts to those English words), with all of these words having technical philosophical meanings that are different from how a 21st century American uses the words in everyday speech. It's easy to get lost in all that. I remember it took me forever to grasp what was wrong with Nestorianism, for example.
Another problem is that not every theologian writes clearly, in a way that connects with every reader. Kierkegaard is an important thinker, but I find him very difficult to read. Similarly with St. Augustine.
A third problem, particular to the university situation, is that professors don't always explain things well, and curricula aren't always designed well, because university faculty are flawed human beings and we make mistakes. If a professor tells the class that Barth builds on Augustine and Calvin, and changes their ideas in thus-and-so way, but the professor forgot to tell the class what the ideas of Augustine and Calvin are, then the class will be lost in that explanation. Or maybe the professor assumed that the students had studied Augustine and Calvin in an earlier course, but the students missed that prerequisite somehow. Mistakes like this can lead to bewildered students.
These kinds of problems can happen when everybody loves God, and everybody is trying to do the right thing, but we have human limitations.
