During my 2nd year of engineering we had to complete a programming "mini project". If you're familiar with these you may know the quality of most projects.
Year after year you can see the same projects reappear, some even to the point that the old student's details aren't changed in the source code to reflect the new owner's!
So we had to complete this project by forming a group - minimum of 2 students and a maximum of 4. The guideline? It should have a UI (duh!) and a database. The clear instructions from the professor were to use only Visual Basic or Java. The syllabus booklet obviously mentioned that any suitable language could be used.
I went to him to ask if it was OK to do a "web based", "database-enabled" & "User Interfacing" application. To say that he was agitated would be a euphemism. It was like I had insulted him. To placate him, I respectfully pointed out that it was perfectly okay for me to use a language that I was comfortable in and that a web-based project was in fact a norm.
To avenge the dishonor I had brought him, he bullied another member of my group to leave my group just an hour before the demo to an external professor (a professor from some other college who is invited for the demo and viva voce).
Meanwhile the demo went great, the external was very satisfied with the answers to his questions although I can be sure he was a little happily surprised that I had coded it myself completely. My professor sitting next to him was fuming with rage. I gladly left the hall being sure of making it satisfactorily.
I was dumbfounded when I found it on my report card that I had failed getting only 10% of the total allotment for the project and the re-hashed project managed to score 90% and above.
The sad thing is most of my colleagues didn't even try to code or come up with an idea. Even sadder is the fact that if you do, the professors make sure to take it personally and pull you down instead of motivating or giving a helping hand.