A lot of this is sensitive to context. Students in high school, college, and grad school have different levels of maturity. There are also different incentives for each setting.
I would say that high school and college students are more similar than grad students though.
Perhaps more important is the fact that the power the teachers have in each setting is different as well: high school teachers have little power whereas college professors have much more leeway in designing and grading their courses.
I feel like a lot of development happens between 14 and 18, so I don't understand why freshmen and senior years of high school are so similar from an academic philosophy perspective. Even in a private school where the teachers have a bit more freedom. I think a lot of kids get thrown into college with no idea how to manage themselves because they never had to before. There ought to be a better way to ease into that.
I agree it is very context dependent though. Not just academic year but also class content. Some courses need to lay a strong foundation, others would be most useful as a survey, still others are about synthesizing knowledge from across prior courses. Some classes contain students mostly forced to be there and others contain mostly students that are excited about that particular material. Different fields lend themselves to different assignment styles. And so on.
A lot of this is sensitive to context. Students in high school, college, and grad school have different levels of maturity. There are also different incentives for each setting.
I would say that high school and college students are more similar than grad students though.
Perhaps more important is the fact that the power the teachers have in each setting is different as well: high school teachers have little power whereas college professors have much more leeway in designing and grading their courses.