Purpose? Colleges teach you the structure only, you need intelligence to be able to draw out the relevant content and come up with the insights, and organize/ present them cohesively and cogently.
Know you are going to say this. So predictable. Of course, is not good for society to train such narrow minded intellectuals. Don’t think open mindedness and wisdom can be taught.
This 
Although I have doubts about the quality of education people are getting these days from colleges where basic analytical and philosophical skills can’t even be attained.
I am with Charlie Munger. Many of his speeches hit on the same pet theme of his. Kids should have a little bit of knowledge in very wide range of fields, from math to physics to politics to literature to psychology to whatever, so they have a latticework of models to think about problems.
In practice that could mean taking the first couple of introductory classes in a ridiculous wide range of subjects. The only feasible time to do it is at college.
K12 
Are you suggesting more of the same in college?
My idea of a perfect college:
A small band of students will travel to Sitka, Alaska, this month to help reinvent higher education. They won’t be taking online courses, or abandoning the humanities in favor of classes in business or STEM, or paying high tuition to fund the salaries of more Assistant Vice Provosts for Student Life. They represent a growing movement of students, teachers and reformers who are trying to compensate for mainstream higher education’s failure to help young people find a calling: to figure out what life is really for.
These students will read works by authors ranging from Plato and Herbert Marcuse to Tlingit writers. The point is to “develop and flex a more rigorous political imagination,” according to one course syllabus. They will take on 15 to 20 hours a week of manual labor in Sitka, and set their group’s rules on everything from curfews to cellphones. Last summer’s cohort discouraged the use of phones during class and service hours and ordered everyone to turn off the internet at 10 p.m.
This is Outer Coast, one of an expanding number of educational experiments born out of a deepening sense that mainstream American colleges are too expensive, too bureaucratic, too careerist and too intellectually fragmented to help students figure out their place in the universe and their moral obligations to fellow humans.
Not more than 1/3 of student body ( coming out of K12 ) is fit for education higher than K12. It is waste of time and money after that on those who do not have aptitude. Universalization of college education may be liberal dream, but does not make sense. K12 is very good education for most of the people. It provides exposure in wide range of subjects. And if imparted correctly, it is good enough to take students to college. Those who have appetite for further education, can take college education on personal basis. I hear teachers at college complain that a lot of time they have to teach what students should have learned in k12.
I took calculus in high school and got a B but when I went to college I had to drop calculus because it was too hard. I ended up taking pre-cal 2x. Still got a B. 
I’m a terrible Asian.
College education has become a political matter in this country. Politicians promote free college because they want reason to tax people and earn votes by dishing out college degrees as patronage to the people who are not fit for college education. Teachers and college administrators like it because they get to maintain higher standards of living during working life and during retirement. The suckers are college students who are saddled with huge debts.
Kids should be required to do a year or 2 of public service. Military, civilian or overseas. They should be paid and made to pay taxes and taught how to pay bills and to learn fiscal responsibility.
Did three years of National Service.
Learned all these in high school. I was poor and malnutrition.
@manch Don’t believe Charlie Munger speech in 1994. It works until it doesn’t. It doesn’t work anymore. BRK annualized return has been declining, now about 19% since inception, most of the gains are front-loaded, annualized return for the last 10 years can’t even beat S&P index. The world has changed! Is no longer the same type of nail, and he is still messing with the Geiger counter (hammer?).
Like they say, “Trend is your friend till the bend”
The Chinese just built a hospital for sick people at the center of the epidemic. It took the just 10 days from start to finish. It shows what you can do without a bureaucratic government always looking over your shoulder.
Our system is not perfect but it’s not the worst thing in the world.
We should continue to demand better but it’s incremental…
If the Chinese government had banned the sale of bush meat the corona virus wouldn’t have happened, plus they intimidated the 8 original people who discovered the virus. Tried to cover it up and helped make it much worse.
I’m eating bush meat in the Bay. Watch out.
It was banned by the central government. Is common for provincial government or city government to run their own show ignoring directives from the central government.