I took a semester of astronomy in college - never got any telescope time. You’ve got to be pretty high up in the program to do that.
There are other ways of learning astronomy besides looking through a telescope. In fact, most of what I learned was not in the lab, per se...a lot of math/physics, actually.
I took the basic 101 Astronomy course at my university just because it had a lab where you could use the university 24 inch telescope, because hey, when am I going to be around a 24 inch telescope again? (so far, never)