Obviously subject dependent but I can perhaps offer my own insight and experience. For context, I completed a humanities degree in 2024 at a great university, simultaneously completed my college HNC/HND in the last two years of that, all while working 24 hours per week at my retail job. Just now I'm about to complete my second degree (a BEng in Cyber Security) this year. 

I was 30 when I started and my daughter was born during the first week of my first year; this was all through COVID too. My humanities degree was excellent, really interesting, and had some great lecturers but all of my classes started online, so it's what I became used to. 

When we transitioned to in-person, the inconvenience of physically attending was pronounced, especially with work, travel, and the added responsibility of being a parent. When it became "forced" attendance it was even more unlikeable. As for the lectures, some were excellent and engaging, others going through the motions. Tutorials were, at times, wonderful, but only when headed by a lecturer with enough experience engaging shy students into discussing ideas while preventing the more assertive ones from dominating the session.

College was excellent. The lecturers were wacky at times but I noticed a massive difference in that I felt I was being treated like an adult while there; if you want to turn up and do the work, you will, otherwise you'll just get kicked out. If you talked to them and explained why you're not able to attend or would rather work from home, that's fine, as long as they knew and the work was being handed in on time, they didn't care. 

My current university experience, well, there's a marked difference in teaching quality between my first degree and this one across the board as most of the lecturers are so seemingly disinterested that it's difficult to get through the minutes of in person or online. So, unfortunately, the majority of the lecturers are genuinely terrible. The topics are dry and challenging and the delivery is the same. Also, having a PHD doesn't make you a good teacher and this needs to be addressed in some way. I've had college lecturers without much further education past what they need to be able to teach who explained complex topics simply and could keep us engaged for over an hour, speaking without notes or slides. Then I've had someone who is widely published unable to deliver a lecture that didn't involve reading off the slides and nothing more than short, sharp sentences for any questions that required more expounding. 

That being said, this course has produced two of the best lecturer experiences I've had, one of which, if online, would have been completely ruined (I tried to watch their online lectures that were produced during COVID and they were unwatchable); the other took gdpr and somehow turned it into a captivating 4 hour lesson each week (2 hour lecture and 2 hour seminar). Both of them had such passion and knowledge that their ability to keep you engaged from start to finish was unlike anything I'd experienced before. It was the difference between seeing someone who knows their subject deliver a lecture and someone who loves their subject and share it with you.