Maybe your university students aren't as well-funded as my university students, ever thought of that, huh? Maybe your universities are lagging behind the state of the art in the rest of the civilized world. Maybe, you just don't know enough about this subject, actually.

I'm talking about the fixturing required to actually probe those pins.

This just isn't as impossible as you claim. And, there are plenty of reasons to do it.

Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean someone else hasn't already actually done it.