They are certainly smarter than the students in the high school I was in today. No one would put away their phone, they wouldn't even sit down in their seats. The handouts were wadded up and used as basketballs into the wastebasket. So you had a whole classroom of "students" intently using cell phones and paying no attention whatsoever to the work at hand. You figure out the demographic.
So yep, a German Shepherd would definitely qualify as far more intelligent than one of these lovely creatures.