Well, at my R1s we had those things and in my experience it was freeing, not limiting: you knew exactly what the program was, and then you got to decide what you wanted to do to meet the goals. When I worked at my SLAC, we had vague program goals and courses were more free standing. But, you then had to guess at what the people who really held power — the tenured and ensconced folk, and the instructors who were teaching the bulk of the classes — were doing, because this was in fact what students expected.
Those of us coming in from other systems all had trouble figuring it out and were considered too demanding. We weren’t, we were just phrasing things as they were phrased where we came from, but that was not how the students experienced us; they thought we were “disorganized” and “hard to understand” because we were slightly different and also because we were somewhat tentative, trying to understand where the students were so we could meet them there.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
My best advice on dealing with students like this comes from the Chron’s fora, specifically the “Jedi Mind Tricks for Teaching” thread. I don’t always remember to do these things and I find the quantity of mind-games one needs to engage in to seem like a “good” teacher (note seem, not be) annoying even when it is not exhausting, but it really does seem to work to keep emphasizing how organized the course is, how they are learning critical thinking skills, etc.
You are right.
I am looking for the thread. Here is one on grading.
http://jobs.chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=97177.0
http://forums.chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=50350.0
That’s the one I was thinking of.
One caveat: I think a lot of the people who hang out on the Chron fora are either CC teachers or grad students, so their attitudes about some things will reflect their situations/interest (as, for example, being more oriented to teaching than research). OTOH, they have a great deal of experience dealing with all kinds of students, including the unmotivated.
Well, it’s not a bad set of ideas and a lot of them work. But what has been working the best for me lately is handing out a printed agenda every day at the beginning of class, as though it were a professional meeting.