I’ve met these people before, they’re almost always undergrads from elite schools that could pick and succeed at anything they choose
The prestigious schools filter up-front based on merit, and filter a 2nd time based on the ability to keep up and remain diligent to pass the courses. Less famous schools only have the 2nd filter, and have more people drop in the process that could not keep up.
The quality of education can be very similar, or even favor small schools in some subjects based on luck and school staff interests. The vast majority of learning at this level is made by the student anyway; there is only so much a good teacher or expensive teaching resources can do to help.
I've talked with interviewers that seemed completely uninterested in what courses or major was taken, just the fact that someone got through a difficult major as a stamp of quality.
Choosing difficult courses and passing is more valuable to the student. (well, a 4.0 on a paper is also valuable in a way, but more in a charade way)
What concerns me is not grade inflation, its difficulty and deapth deflation. I had plenty of courses that bored me but that had plenty of fun depth and difficulty that could have been covered with a bit more effort of students and teacher.
But we cannot measure courses difficulty and deapth, so we measure grade inflation instead. Which then lead us to false conclusions about how to solve it. (making the metrics more accurate at the cost of time and resources fir teaching the subjects)
i think less emphasis on grade and more emphasis on covered subjects could mabie shift the incentive. Its difficult to actually implement through because humans love maximising metrics... so it will remain my fantasy.
I also knew a number of elite school students and aside from usually having wealthy parents and motivation problems when given real world tasks with real world levels of possible reward, they aren't all that far away from the average.
Take for example SBF.. possibly a genius would have gone straight to juvi either way if he was from a community college town and wasn't a nepo child of actual geniuses. More important than having any skills in the subject, he spoke economic shibboleth as a native speaker which his parents learned as a second tongue in a much harder process.