I am baffled by the first paragraph, which begins "Getting a good college education turns out to be a lot easier than it used to be." Can he possibly be saying

I am baffled by the first paragraph, which begins "Getting a good college education turns out to be a lot easier than it used to be." Can he possibly be saying that cheating in a class to get a high grade is "getting a good education"? Or is this just an attempt at sarcasm? Or was it simply a typo, and he meant to write something like "getting through college" instead? In the current anti-intellectual period in my country (US), it can hard to figure out who is kidding and who isn't.