The heuristic often repeated by folks in the profession is that you've got a top 5% of students who match your description of students who've proven they're good at learning, a bottom 5% who is entirely unprepared for university life and who knows how they got admitted, and the rest whose understanding of the subject matter is influenced by the performance of the teacher.
Post-COVID, lots of us (and you can find articles about this by conducting a simple search) have noticed that the top 5% hasn't changed, but the bottom 5% seems to have gotten significantly larger--10%, sometimes 15% of students in introductory level courses seem unprepared for university. I've seen functional illiteracy in some of my students at my good R1, for the first time ever. Our university is also on a huge enrollment drive, and are constantly hinting that faculty need to grade more easily to keep students happy.
Post-COVID, lots of us (and you can find articles about this by conducting a simple search) have noticed that the top 5% hasn't changed, but the bottom 5% seems to have gotten significantly larger--10%, sometimes 15% of students in introductory level courses seem unprepared for university. I've seen functional illiteracy in some of my students at my good R1, for the first time ever. Our university is also on a huge enrollment drive, and are constantly hinting that faculty need to grade more easily to keep students happy.