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I can't speak for other colleges, nor can I answer for the current state of academia.

You are sadly mistaken, sir, No one learns how to think without some degree of instruction. And high school is not the location to learn much of anything.
High school education is by definition compulsory. One had little choice of courses. Mostly, high school education is a cross between a manufacturing process and simply adolescent sitting. Most students attend class because they have to be there.

College education is voluntary. Its expensive and requires one to skip at least four years of work.
Again I can speak for no university except my own. No one attempted to indoctrinate me. As I said, professors had views - frequently strongly held views - but were open to the opinions of students. Free, frank, and open discussion was encouraged. No one (certainly not me or anyone I knew) was penalized for views contrary to those expressed by professors. Professors insisted only that views be clearly conceived and expressed - and that those views be backed by solid evidence. The evidence presented was required to be factual and interpretations derived from that evidence must be within the realm of credibility.

For example, one professor said that we could argue that a glass was half full or half empty, but we could not say that the glass did not exist, when we could put our hands around it. And he said we could argue whether the material used to construct the glass was Waterford crystal or common table glass; that is we could argue about the value of the glass. But we could not say the fluid in the glass was gin, when a chemical analysis demonstrated the fluid was water.

Reading lists were long and included books from a variety of points of view; and, at least in my classes, professors were open to students’ ideas about adding a book not listed on the reading lists.

I feel terribly sorry for you. I don't know where (or if) you attended college. If you were indoctrinated, you missed a time of life that could have been one of great joy. It was for me.

I feel terribly sorry for you. I don't know where (or if) you attended college. If you were indoctrinated, you missed a time of life that could have been one of great joy. It was for me.

Although there were plenty of idiot left-wing professors who spewed nonsense that I argued with in class, I didn't get indoctrinated. You know why? Because I already knew how to think for myself before I ever got to college, or high school, for that matter. Given that you seem to think that you lacked this skill until you came under the guiding hands of your divine professors, I'd have to say that your level of "thinking" is probably sub-par. Some things can be learned, but not taught.

Also, one of the nice things about this world is that there are cool things called books which people can read without some teacher holding their hands and whispering in their ears, which impart all kinds of information, opinion, and wonderful little stories. Young people who partake of those tend to learn how to think long before they ever get to one of our institutions of "higher learning". If you truly feel that the level of thought you were exposed to and forced to ingest as an college student represents a higher level than that which one can achieve when one thinks for himself, then I feel bad for what you'll never know.

A perfect analogy for all this just popped into my head: once upon a time, US Army Basic Training was simply that - training, because most of the guys who came into the service already had a lifetime of good physical fitness behind them. Nowadays, recruiters have to reject many for enlistment who are too fat, and the ones who do get in have to be physically rebuilt once in training just so they can perform the minimal requirements of the job. Our population's physical fitness has been dumbed down to where routine abilities are now considered almost exceptional. Likewise, our population has been dumbed down intellectually to where incoming college kids have to take high school or junior high school remedial English and math classes just to get to the basics for college level classes, which they might be lucky to hit by the time they graduate. Meanwhile, professors now feel that it is their job to teach kids how to think rather than putting them through the rigors of a classical education, which actually requires absorbing knowledge, and this is largely because those professors are dumbed down as well, and couldn't hold a candle, knowledge-wise, to your average high school graduate 100 years ago.

So, you can go ahead and feel enlightened because some dumbed-down college professors fed you dumbed-down curriculum because you and all of the other dumbed-down students never bothered to learn how to think for yourselves by cracking a book or solving a problem when you were younger, but, for the love of God, don't go pretending you're Plato.