I don't know, maybe I just had a very unique experience in University ...
I worked through university and took an extra course over the "Maximum" number of courses to get both of my degrees in a reasonable time; and I was surrounded by people who got far worse grades than I did, had a lighter course workload and didn't work at all (and almost all these people complained about how hard it was). In many of my courses my professors would comment that me and my friends were more like what the students used to be like a decade earlier before the University had (essentially) doubled enrollment by lowering standards.







