[throwanem]

My relevant experience is twenty years stale, but I'd say yes, absolutely, there are a lot of people who go to college in the US despite not actually wanting to. I saw it in many of my high-school cohort, even as they expressed their grave concern to me about my evident disinterest in doing likewise. (It was an interesting kind of place, the high school where I graduated. Early in my time there, the first person who took me aside to ask why, despite evident intelligence, I seemed not to apply myself in class, was the head of the cheerleading squad.)

If anything, I'd say the rate of people attending college despite not wanting to can only have increased since then. The assumption that college is an absolute necessity for a comfortable middle-class life has only in the last few years come into serious question, and still has yet to face anything like the inquisition it deserves.