The state of higher learning in the US

What do you feel about the state of learning past the high school level. Do you think that it is in a good place? Are we still pushing the young men and women that under take more study to be better thinkers? Do we have a good system in place to even allow the professors a place to comfortable push these people to think and take in ideas beyond what is someone's "safe" way of looking at the world? Or has it been made so that isn't even anywhere among the goals of these places of higher learning?

Just curious as to others thoughts on the subject.
For me personally I didn't take up higher learning. I went and did trade school to learn to be a emergency medical technician. For me that was just learning a new set of skills to be able to do a job. It had nothing to do with pushing my mind to be better at anything such as logic, reasoning or anything else. But yet I have come across a lot of people in my life that seem to have went to college and came away with nothing more than a costly bit of paper. An others just come away with bit more learning a really high price tag for a small skill set. I know there are plenty others that do take more away from it than that. This is just what I have seen personally.