Efficiency of C++, or lack of (Score 1)

I am a college student who is currently learning C++. One of the biggest faults that our professor has pointed out is that C++ wastes memory by making copies of variables, etc... when it passes it to a method to be used by an object. I have to agree that it does seem terribly inefficient. I am just curious, why did you implement the language to do this? Are there any apparant advantages?