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I make no judgments about the current state of higher education. But I will state that if one expects students to possess thinking skills before entering college, one lives in a fantasy world.

See, this is the part where we have our greatest disagreement. I really don't see how you can claim that thinking begins at college. A person generally enters college at around 18, which is no longer a child. If one has not learned how to think for himself by that time, he will not learn it from anyone else. What he will learn from these professors, these self-styled guardians of knowledge, is WHAT to think, because if his head is empty of the ability to think when he gets to college, that hole will be filled with the thinking of those teaching the class, regardless of whether they are left-wing, right-wing or whatever.

Think of it this way - the human brain is like a gun. You aim it, you fire it at will. The only thing that the universities should be doing is feeding you ammunition. If they have to actually put the gun parts into your head, then show you where the trigger is, then your gun will fire the way they want it to fire, and at the targets they want.

My big objection to your seemingly innocuous assertion that your professors taught you how to think is that your attitude shows a blind acceptance that is all too common these days in our population and leads, quite frankly, to a level of gullibility and mindless obedience that I think is at the heart of our country's decline. These academics are not gods, and, quite often, they are not even competent academics. Virtually everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt. They may present facts incorrectly. They may present correct facts, but a flawed or fraudulent interpretation of those facts. They may lie outright, or they may simply not know what they are talking about, all the while being supremely confident that they are masters of the subject area. Once you understand that, it should be a mere baby-step to the conclusion that such people have no business teaching anyone how to think, and that any attempt to do so is an abominable breech of their station.

Furthermore, any passive acceptance of their claim to teach people how to think is merely a horrific subservience and subordination of one's own individuality and, quite frankly, humanity to a group of people whose only claim to such an honor is that they have had other like-minded people declare them to be elite. That acceptance is on par with the attitude that everything the government does is ok because they are the government and they know what's best for you. It is repugnant to a country of people who claim to be free, or at least value freedom.

I never said that thinking begins in college.
By learning to think, I mean to think analytically, critically, rationally, rigorously, and to express those thoughts in a logical, coherent manner. More importantly, to learn to think means to have ones thoughts exposed to public comment (and occasional ridicule) and to be willing to accept criticism and learn from it.

I went to a private high school, one of the best in my area of the country. The instruction was excellent, but nothing taught or experienced prepared for the sort of examination to which my thoughts would be subjected in college.

The human brain is not a gun or a computer, both of which perform complex operations that were designed by others.
The brain is capable of subtlety and creativity.
Unlike any machine, the brain can heal itself, as we witness with the recovery of Rep Giffords.
Yet for all its power, the brain must be trained and not only trained but trained to be trained. The brain must learn how to learn. The brain must learn how to discriminate. Before the brain can become creative, it must be disciplined. And that sort of discipline does not happen in high school.
I'm not arguing that an occasional prodigy doesn't express itself at a very early age, but such individuals are the exception and not the rule. In fact, their existence proves the rule.

I “accepted” very little of the substance of my professors’ arguments. To this day, I still laugh at the folly of some of their opinions.
I learned from my professors not opinions, but the willingness to criticize - and especially to criticize the opinions expressed in class by anyone and everyone. I learned not to passively accept anyone’s opinion. And I learned how to criticize. I learned how to separate fact from opinion.

I feel sorry for you. If you went to college, your years must have been miserable indeed.