I certainly don't mean to disparage college education, particularly as someone who has never gone to college but firmly believes that it can be a very rewarding

I certainly don't mean to disparage college education, particularly as someone who has never gone to college but firmly believes that it can be a very rewarding experience, but from my own anecdotal experience it seems that for a not insignificant number of people it does seem to be more or less four years of partying. I'm fortunate to have a diverse social group with many friends who did go to college, and even count a CompSci PhD among my close friends, but from my interaction with them I get the impression that not all programs are of even remotely equivalent rigor. In particular, I get the impression that for the non science/engineering related disciplines it can be somewhat easy to coast through the curriculum depending on the school. Again, this is just based on my own observations as someone who has never gone to college so it should be taken with a large grain of salt. Normally I would completely discount my own opinion here as observation bias, the only thing keeping me from doing so is my feeling that if college was as universally rigorous as many say it is, and placed as great an importance on critical thinking and independent thought as I've been led to believe, we should be seeing a much more conscientious and knowledgeable citizenry considering we are living in a time were more people are going to college than ever before. I'm not sure that's the case however.