> the thought that here we have a bunch of people who have paid tons of money, set aside a significant fraction of their time, and nominally want to learn a subject that they signed up for; and yet, they still won’t sit down and actually do the reading unless they are going to be quizzes on it.

How often have they put down the money, as opposed to their parents?

How often do they actually care about learning the subject, as opposed to be able to credibly represent (e.g. to employers) that they have learned the subject?

How often is the nominally set-aside time actually an inconvenience? (Generally, they would either be at leisure or at the kind of unskilled work their parents would be disappointed by, right?) My recollection of university is that there was hardly any actual obligation to spend the time on anything specific aside from exams and midterms, as long as you were figuring out some way or other to do well enough on those.

I suppose I should have said “nominally want to learn” etc, but I think you are right: most students simply want the credential. I maintain that this is still a strange attitude, since at some point, some employer is going to ask you to do some skilled work in exchange for money. If you can’t do the work, you are not worth the money, credentials be damned. On the other hand, I routinely see unqualified people making a hash out of things and nobody really seems to care. Maybe the trick is not to be noticably bad at your job. Still, this all strikes me as a bad way to live when learning and doing good work is both interesting and enjoyable.