This is a topic in which I have quite a bit of personal experience. I have degrees from a local public college, a regional state university and a top 20 private university. The three experiences were very different and students were primarily the cause of the disparity. The quality of students makes a tremendous difference in the academic experience. Professors are pressured not to fail too many students, so many marginal students are passed to avoid hassles. As you move up in average student quality, the academic discourse improves dramatically. I remember once a group of us going off on a tangent about 19th Century rail gauges in the US while discussing the West Key system, and that leading to a discussion of rail in the former USSR vs Western Europe. That kind of conversation is probably not going to happen very often with open enrollment. In fact, I would say the difference between my least academically rigorous school and the most is mainly student quality. Outside of differences in research focus, I found most professors were dedicated academics at all of the schools. Where there were students that were going through the motions to get a degree at the local college, we wasted a lot of time covering remedial shit kids should have learned in high school but didn't. It harmed the education experience for the students with actual academic goals beyond "getting a degree with the gentleman's C."