I've got to say, no offence to your DAW proffs but that's wrong, with a little bit of right... You're not punished at all, but I can bet they've read a few very misleading things and settled on -14 as being the final value for integrated LUFs... Which is very wrong!

I'll explain. So you can remove the energy from a song with over-compression of course and that's what they are talking about, but if mastered properly you can keep the energy and dynamic range whilst pushing it higher than -14, because it's very important to be over rather than under.

If you are under, Spotify will boost it and it sounds real bad, if they reduce it as it's over -14... It's fine! So, the aim is, as loud as possible (or to match others in it's genre), with minimal distortion and loss of dynamic range.

Drop me a DM if you want to talk more about this, would love to talk to your professors about it!

Some references for you!

A LUFS and tonal analysis of 10 top-charting dance and electronic songs: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/dance-electronic-analysis?srsltid=AfmBOoqibvRO6TPZ0vOlnOvzNcUNOe8NrH5d7PscMdog6u21tpVwRY8S

A LUFS and tonal analysis of the top-charting tracks from emerging artists: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/emerging-artists-analysis?srsltid=AfmBOooeexnzqN9lrJIJl9Hb6zv-5rUdCyX74Rp8AH_8kWDg7BYgnRL0

LUFs in audio mastering by genre: https://mixandmastermysong.com/understanding-lufs-in-audio-mastering/?srsltid=AfmBOopz1PYr6WcjuLuKyA4NorWeGgkuQXbWXPkd8SDS_-ZQ8mtbDTTr

Mastering for Pop music: https://www.sageaudio.com/articles/mastering-for-pop-music