First college i went to was unbearably shit. The graduate programs (elsewhere, thank the gods) i loved because the students actually wanted to be in those classes and treated their professors better.

Agreed. Sure there were some freshman level courses that were pretty basic and lectures that were skippable. But all of the Junior and Senior level courses were much more challenging and I really needed to understand everything for science lab work to not just be a pile of burnt crap. There were also the exams that were so hard they let us have open textbooks, just studying alone at home wouldn't have gotten through those exams.

Yeah, the students that engage and rate the lectures, tutorials, etc aren’t cramming “everything” at 2am before exams and generally fare better in 2nd/3rd year when these strategies get less viable.

Anecdotally, they’re also less likely to get into embarrassing arguments with a lecturer who holds a PhD, because they’ve asked for the 15th time if a particular topic is going to be on the exam and pissed them off.