In the past, higher education scholarship has relied on such measures as standardized test results, final examination outputs and GPA to define academic success. Today’s educational psychology would have one put more stock in active student participation as the chief behavioral mediator of learning outcomes over the long term. Yet for all that is made of its importance, an institution will often not go so far as to separate out the particular behaviors of a highly successful participant from those of a passive learner in its evaluations. The present study is an empirical one, looking at the multidimensional behavioral architecture of successful academic participation in both undergraduate and graduate populations. Over three years we have followed a multi-wave cohort of 1,120 learners in a range of faculties with a mixed-methods longitudinal approach of some rigour; this was complemented by 70 in-depth qualitative sessions with university professors, student advisors and instructional leads. Our quantitative side gauged everything from the frequency of active engagement and rates of proactive inquiry to indices of collaborative synergy and how long task persistence is held. Structural equation modeling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis tell us that strategic self-regulation and a propensity for classroom inquiry are formidable positive predictors of achievement (β = 0.82, p < 0.001). On the other hand, there is a marked negative effect on the velocity of academic milestones when one is a mere passive presence or allows cognitive disengagement to go unchallenged (β = -0.59, p < 0.01). What these results call for is a change in pedagogical direction in higher education: institutions need to be doing more to build interactive ecosystems where student behavioural engagement is encouraged, and less to expect compliance with the lecture model.