The reason that students can spend so much time on video games as well as other distractions is that grade inflation and has insured that most of them will do OK regardless of how little work they put into their classes. And grade inflation is held in place by student evaluations, which give students the upper hand over their professors and are often the key to having a job at all.

Some student evaluations are valuable, and in specific instances they may work well, but on the whole, and I stress on the whole, they have greatly contributed to the debasement of education in our time.