Nobody should be surprised at this, since the elimination of independent, critical thought has one of the core objectives of public schools in this country over the last century.
QFT: “Anyone who shows up as a college freshman without such skills never should have been admitted in the first place.”
The trouble is that this criteria would effectively eliminate most students from college. The reason is that the formative education years have moved so far away from classic liberal education of how to think. By classic liberal education, I mean such elements as were commonly taught in the 19th and early 20th Century known as the Trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music). These basics, especially the Trivium, form the basis of learning, thinking, and reasoning. So much of the K-12 curriculum is pablum with an orientation to passing the state-directed tests that teachers are not really teaching, IMO.