It's a little disappointing, really, but perfectly possible in my experience. The uni I'm doing my CS degree at also isn't exactly on top of its game when it comes to practical yet low-level stuff like this.
Its interesting that the more low-level engineering stuff isn't taught everywhere and that some people wish it was. My school was much heavier on the engineering side of CS (3 systems level courses that were required for undergrad and optional OS course, all of which discussed syscalls pretty extensively). A lot of people in my program hated it though and found it to be a serious barrier-to-graduation since it just did not make sense to some people who did OK with more higher level concepts.
Personally I really liked that stuff, it had a very mechanical aspect to it and even though I'm not a systems programmer I feel like it gave me a much more rounded understanding of a computer as a machine.
