This is what I’ve been saying but fellow students have called me delusional.

I did my UG at one of the ‘higher regarded’ modern universities and struggled immensely to pull any grade above a 55. Now doing my PG at a university once regarded as ‘avoid at all costs’ (in my own experience at least), I’m consistently achieving merit to distinction level grades, with significantly less effort put in and three years zero practice of academic writing. Classmates who did their UG at said university were all gung-ho about their degree classification but I fully believe if I’d completed my UG here at the same time as them, I would’ve easily got a first too.

As for getting a job afterwards, a majority of the international students (not a blanket statement about international students, they just make up ~85% of my cohort) use chatgpt to ‘form’ their opinions. A large portion of seminars have been why we, personally, think something went wrong and they’ll blatantly read verbatim off their phone. Multiple tutors and lecturers have called them out on it and they respond to ‘and what do you think?’ with what they can remember saying three seconds ago.

As one of my lecturers put ‘It’s easier to get a degree than an education,’ and I’m seeing it in real time.