I don't think the schools are all that different myself and in some ways are probably better than ever. I do think it is easier than ever to get through school without actually learning what you are exposed to.

In engineering maths, people lean on Wolfram Alpha to solve and break down equations then pretend like they understand because they know the steps. You can look up endless discussion and breakdown of rhetoric and take a position as your own without applying much critical thought beforehand. Cliffnotes. People these days seems to think that because they can look up information it's the same as knowing it.

That's before we get into issues such as institutional cheating. I know a person who makes most of his daily cash shadow writing essays for college and high school students. It's done through an anonymizing method on the web. No idea how many he actually writes, but he seems to write a lot of them especially late spring/fall.