This is not limited to public schools. I experienced something similar after transferring from a private university, taking six full semesters of a computer engineering curriculum, only to be required to attend community college to take intro to computers, among others, before I was allowed to enroll in a public university.
So, six years of fulltime classes for an undergraduate degree is my experience.
I'm in a similar situation, though I'm going to stick it out and finish the CE degree at my private school. I've heard other students call up University of Washington who once the people there heard the name of my school, they laughed and said "Yeah we won't accept your credits even though your classes are harder than ours and your school average is 20-credit semesters." The main issue there is accreditation. For my school to get the same level of accreditation as universities, basically the only thing that needs to change is the power structure and possibly a few more required "soft" classes. We have a pretty decent Dictator even if he has his faults, the analogy is something like the difference between Python with a BDFL and C++ with a committee.
So, six years of fulltime classes for an undergraduate degree is my experience.