“The problem with college brainwashing is it’s dishonest and immoral.”
I’m not convinced that any brainwashing is taking place to any significant extent whatsoever. Most professors in departments outside of economics are political liberals yet for a generation the hot author among college students has been Ayn Rand. But far more students are too interested in drinking, partying, and various other hedonisms to pay attention to the ideology of the professor. (That, BTW, may explain the appeal of Ayn Rand — she purported to provide a moral justification for self-centered hedonism — the exact opposite of what the Torah teaches.)
It isn’t that there aren’t problems with secular universities, or that Orthodox students don’t need to be prepared. But one needs to be accurate in the assessment if we are to do good by our young people. Simply calling it “brainwashing” doesn’t help, and with the possible exception of Rabbi Avigdor Miller z’tz’l, who was a graduate of Yeshiva College and not a secular institution, none of the many university-educated gedolim have characterized universities in that way.