It’s a bit different but I did 2 and a bit years at a ‘traditional’ RG uni in the early/mid 00s. I had to leave due to family caring responsibilities.
I decided to finish my degree in 2020 with the OU, and transferred 2 years worth, so i had 60 credits to complete to be awarded the degree. I hadn’t done anything academic in the 14 years in between.
It was fine. It took me a little while to adjust. I got the equivalent of a 2.1 in my first essay, a high 2.1 in the second and then I got into the swing of things and improved enough that I finished on a good 1st overall. I went onto do a masters and finished that with a high distinction too.
Personally I found some aspects a LOT easier now due to technological advances in terms of reading material. Back in the mid 00s it was still a case of suggested reading of x, y, z titles/chapters. So you’d have to make a trip to the library to find those particular books to read the relevant material. There might be say 10 copies of that book… and 50 students needing it. So then you were scrabbling around trying to find other similar and relevant texts, all of which took a LOT of time before you had been able to find something useful (if possible!). Journal articles were incredibly difficult to search for- you had to know the journal a particular article was in, and therefore know in advance that a particular article existed (I don’t know if this was specific to my uni database or they were all this clunky).
Now there are HUGE online databases and keywords searches. A large number of books are online and the unis subscribe to the majority of journals- all with keyword searches. This cut down a lot of ‘wasted’ hours sifting through content that wasn’t necessarily relevant. Personally, as a mature student it meant that what would have previously taken hours could be done in 20 min snippets of time collating material that was probably going to be helpful, for you to then sit down and read through when you had a decent block of time to work.
Things like zotero made organising your references so much easier on a long project too. With a few clicks you could keep records of what info was helpful (or might be in the future), and exactly where to find it in x months time.
I also found that there was a lot more support on HOW to do things- for my master’s research vs undergrad dissertation.
I know there is a lot of data now on grade inflation etc, and whilst I don’t necessarily doubt that, I think things have changed dramatically that make it easier for students to do well.