Writing intensive classes focus on the distinction between creative writing and critical writing. There are ways to teach writing while studying enjoyable (and challenging) literature that doesn't interfere with the mechanics and clarity of academic writing. It's a matter of class structure, not the material being taught.
Your ultimate dissatisfaction and frustration sounds more like a dismissal of humanities scholarship in general than it does a sound and coherent criticism of writing styles. Even saying how your wife has been "forced" to read such literature betrays your underlying sentiment.
Maybe WI classes should do that, but neither my WI classes nor hers (so far) have focused on any such distinctions. In her case, the most recent example was just a series of papers or book excerpts of various art critics and theorists, nearly all of whom wrote in a postmodern fashion with varying amounts of marxist sentiment. Her responsibility was only to provide a summary of each and then a total summary at the end. Nothing about the class provided instruction on quality writing, comparison/contrast in styles, etc. Re: "force": All classes force the students to do whatever is listed in the syllabus if they want a passing grade.
Poor writing assuredly presents a "challenge", but only one similar to the challenge of trying to cross a bog without becoming soiled.
It's a matter of studying how this is done and appreciating the subtleties of such writing. Superficial criticisms like "too many ands!" or "unbridled similes!" don't reflect the time and effort spent by literary critics.
I can appreciate a good turn of phrase and even edify a work without having to proclaim it flawless. Amount of time/effort spent by a person on a given subject or skillset is not automatically equivalent to greater insight or skill. Besides differences in talent (tbpc, not claiming more talent here), the law of diminishing returns can (and in more theoretical/critical pursuits usually does) take effect, even to negative effect, like a band that has run out of ideas and starts turning out much worse material than even their early garage demos (yet with professional polish lipsticking the proverbial pig). The art world specifically has long been in the "newer=better" consumeristic trance, and not insignificantly because of monetary reasons.
I'll agree that criticism of syntax is superficial, but given that the author in question should be able to clean that up, it appears
much worse when he doesn't. I won't agree that spitballing similes is something beyond "deep" and "serious" analysis. "Oh this sounds good, let me cram it in there too". It's hamfisted and destroys the impact of the individual similes. Someone who thinks otherwise I would suspect to be the sort of person who loses sight of their ice cream under the toppings, and has so many additives in their coffee it is no longer even recognizable as coffee, and would put so much flair on their apron so as to block sight of the apron, like some actor from Office Space, who laughs and smiles at everything while gaining joy from nothing, sipping that same coffee which is not coffee and eating the toppings which consumed the ice cream.
