Well, the good news is that the graduate students and postdocs who actually do the research are sourced in a much more meritocratic way. Academia
definitely has its politics and inefficiencies, but almost everyone wants to be there and do good work, and top universities have solid systems for attracting and identifying real talent.
Of course, the quality of undergraduates has some effect on morale among the researchers - one imagines that the professor and graduate students teaching a course colloquially called "Stars for Stoners" must be wholehearted evangelists and/or be dying inside a bit every year. But this is largely isolated from the research itself, and you'll always find diamonds in the rough - undergraduates who are truly passionate and capable at a graduate level. They do great work.
If anything, the parent post may be referring to students who come from "feeder schools" which provide tremendous amounts of preparation and everything-on-the-legal-side-of-this-entire-controversy. And though those students are slightly more likely to be immature when they first matriculate, they too end up finding their passions and work ethics, and making great contributions of their own. Sure, the very same resources that let them enter those feeder schools tend to help them when they graduate. But if anything, it's good that the university can now count them as alumni, and that they can help their fellow graduates with networking and continuity of the collegiate experience. Research universities are a well-balanced system, and though there are many reforms that can be done, the systems as a whole work well.