The high achievers are going to be well read anyways; if you stuffed everyone accepted into Stanford into a room for four years instead of teaching them, you'd

The high achievers are going to be well read anyways; if you stuffed everyone accepted into Stanford into a room for four years instead of teaching them, you'd wind up with a bunch of intellectually engaged and well-read individuals. It's the marginally-engaged folks that barely get into college that post-secondary education makes a difference for. And, uhh, they kind of treat it like a four-year party with less parental involvement. IMO, the fact that Americans are some of the least intellectually engaged people on the planet is a cultural problem that is basically fixed by the time children have gone through primary education.