I'll challenge the point that people who actually want to learn do worse on tests. I've been to two schools for a total of 6 years so far, through 3 different undergraduate degrees with differing students. The people who were interested in the material more than their future job invariably do much better. The kids that just want the job don't try too hard to learn any single thing, they don't learn the fundamentals, they don't learn auxiliaries, they get crushed on exams. Kids who really want to learn go learn those things in their spare time and then crush the exams. There is the occasional student who spends their entire college career learning things outside of the material covered by their courses and then do somewhat poorly on their exams, but almost always those people are just learning the skills to get some other job that doesn't align with their degree title too well. they're just a different kind of job first-gimme paper people, they might make an app, or build a company, but most of them don't even try.
All of these people are fine, regular human beings. But i have literally never experienced a colleague do bad on a test because they were "learning too much". My degrees of experience are computer science, mathematics, and physics though so the people who want to keep learning have to be pretty strong students to make it into the master and doctorate programs they want.
I've definitely gone off and studied the wrong thing and learned a bunch of stuff that wasn't on the test and done poorly on it as a result. Didn't stop me from getting a degree, but skipping ahead a few chapters and learning that instead and then failing a test on the chapters you skipped is what "learning too much" looks like.
When I wanted to learn I’d try to understand the fundamentals. How things interact and get a good understanding of relationships between concepts. When I wanted a good grade I’d drill problems for hours on end till I could flawlessly execute the steps required. Completely different study patterns for different outcomes
All of these people are fine, regular human beings. But i have literally never experienced a colleague do bad on a test because they were "learning too much". My degrees of experience are computer science, mathematics, and physics though so the people who want to keep learning have to be pretty strong students to make it into the master and doctorate programs they want.