I beg to differ with you on that one Isaacaustin. The social science programs I saw in the universities, and I went to two universities, encouraged no such thing. They expected strict adherence to "progressive" thought, period.
One professor of memory was an activist lesbian who required her students to wade through reams of extreme feminist writing in the basic social research methods class she taught. Never mind that garbage had absolutely nothing to do with the university's requirements for the course. Another professor showed up drunk most of the time because he couldn't personally handle the way Marx was proven wrong by the fall of the East-European Communist states in the early 90's. I had him as a professor in late 1995. By the way, criticism of "progressive" thought was a big no-no in his class. I could go on, but why waste the space.
One thing which amazed me was that I got all the way through college without any training in critical thinking skills or fallacies. What little I have of those areas are from self-study and plain life experience. The reason for that is obvious. Those universities wanted modern left-wing thinking inculcated in their students with little or no question. Sure, they wanted their students to question traditional morality and thinking, but not due to reason. They simply wanted it rejected because it did not conform with "progressive" truth.
Surprisingly, my brother, who holds a two-year degree in nursing, got more formal training in critical theory and recognition of fallacies than I did. Apparently nurses have greater need for such than social science students.
Sorry you had such a lame college experience. It varies with teachers and institutions. I would always research the teachers and their style of teaching, and if possible, find a way to work around a class I did not want to take with a certain person. I'd discourage you to use your experience as the be-all end-all to what higher education has to offer. In general, the vast realm of social studies involves a lot of critical thinking, or at least it should.