This aligns with my experience as a British student who received a first class degree from a fairly well-respected program.
The reality was that the teaching was uniformly mediocre, I remained pretty clueless about the subject material, and I produced so-so quality work. I should have worked harder for my own curiosity, but there was a complete lack of external motivation because the academic standards were so low.
To paraphrase someone's quote: I wouldn't recommend a club that had me as a member.
I think one of Groucho Marx's other quotes is probably more applicable to the sentiment of the article; "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
I'm in a similar situation. I graduated a few years ago from a good British university and got a first, but I frequently look back and wonder how I managed it.
I distinctly remember arriving and working hard for the first semester, I got 80-something percent in one course and 90+ in the other and had this awful realisation that I could glide through the first 2 years (of a 4 year program) where only a 50% passing grade was needed.
By the third year the courses did become much harder but only relatively. Whilst money doesn't seem the right way to restrict entry I do feel like they could have enforced higher entry standards, especially when I saw only ~30% of my fellow students make it to graduation.
That doesn't make sense to me. "Had" past-tense implied completing the duration of the degree in the manner described without receiving the slightest reprimand.
The reality was that the teaching was uniformly mediocre, I remained pretty clueless about the subject material, and I produced so-so quality work. I should have worked harder for my own curiosity, but there was a complete lack of external motivation because the academic standards were so low.
To paraphrase someone's quote: I wouldn't recommend a club that had me as a member.