[szul]

Even if you don't have a degree in your field, college offers an opportunity to enhance your own critical thinking and problem solving abilities, which are paramount to success in some fields.

Also, one has to consider the shifts in education that seem to be focused more on graduation rates than quality graduates. In such a situation, graduate school becomes the new undergrad, and undergrad becomes the new high school degree. This isn't everywhere, but that seems to be the general trend across many markets: a four year degree is become a minimum qualification.

[yummyfajitas]

...college offers an opportunity to enhance your own critical thinking and problem solving abilities, which are paramount to success in some fields.

What does this actually mean in concrete terms? I.e., what measurement could I make that would prove this true or false?

[davismwfl]

My two cents on this.

I have met and interviewed plenty of well educated, degreed individuals that couldn't find their way out of a problem no matter what help you provided them. It doesn't mean these are poorly educated or unintelligent people, just proves that a degree doesn't provided you with critical thinking or problem solving abilities. College only provides you the opportunity to develop these skills, which you can find in other places as well.

[Tycho]

Reading Fooled By Randomness / The Black Swan / Anti-fragile would probably put you on a better footing for critical thinking than any college degree. (And probably some other books you could substitute.)

[szul]

I'm okay with this assessment. College doesn't guarantee these skills, but it certainly provides a great deal of opportunity for the student to gain a significant advantage over non-college grads.

[szul]

Any psychometric test designed to measure achievement--or explicitly critical thinking--that can be administered pre and post college to an experimental sample. You might have to do factor analysis on the college/setting and/or program studied.