I started taking undergrad classes again in Fall of 2008, one a quarter for 7 quarters until my pre-reqs were complete. I actually had a really good experience. I was old as the hills compared to most of the students in the classes, but in general they were pretty nice. I saw a lot of students helping each other, especially in the lab classes. In some of the lecture classes we had group projects and everyone in my groups seemed to contribute to the projects and pull their weight, all with a decent attitude.

One difference now is that many students take their laptops to class and use them to take notes. I find this very distracting. The clacking on the keyboards is quite noisy and I find the screens of students immediately ahead of me or to the side are visually distracting. It is within the professors' authority to say "no laptops" but no one did that, so I guess I can't blame the students for using the laptops since the professors allow it. One professor made the laptop students sit in a separate area of class so they wouldn't distract others. I really liked that. And sometimes if an especially noisy laptop sat next to me, I would move. Some students don't use their laptops for taking notes, but for surfing the web, reading email, etc. I wonder why they bother attending class?

I didn't find the students particularly disrespectful to professors. On the whole, my professors were pretty decent, though, so there was really no reason not to respect them. I did have one professor who was an abysmal lecturer and I did not have much respect for him. It seems like instructors should trouble themselves to learn basic teaching skills. He was so bad I dropped that class after a few sessions.

Another change from when I got my undergrad degree was that the classes were much larger. That is due I'm sure to my taking the pre-reqs at a different sort of institution than I attended way back when. But it was kind of a shock to have 200-500 students in each class! And the students pay a pretty penny for that education too. It seems like you get less these days for your dollar, but I guess that's true in many areas, not just education.