Im quite sure that degrees are easier than apprenticeships these days, they must be since even I got a degree but can barely do any work.
This one time I turned up to a presentation without doing any preparatory work / revision and still got a B+. Passed all the exams by reading the text book a little bit the day and morning before each exam, used ctrl-c, ctrl-v, then move things around / reword using a thesaurus for every essay.
I actually clocked up an average of 9 hours a day in MMOs, and didn't bother going to most of the lectures each year while I was at uni. Still passed.