Agreed. Conducting a meaningful longitudinal study with large enough group to control for confounds would be extremely hard. My personal view is of college as

Agreed. Conducting a meaningful longitudinal study with large enough group to control for confounds would be extremely hard. My personal view is of college as an institution where what you are really learning is how to function within institutions. Institutional training is therefore positive if you wish to continue joining institutions (large firms, academia, etc.) but otherwise irrelevant.