Jothar, regarding your valid questions about college, I don’t believe most YU students encounter any problems in their day to day classes. You are not going to hear any apikursis in accounting, or business law, or math, or the vast majority of courses.
I have heard that they require Bible courses and I don’t know exactly what goes on there. I would think and hope that if Biblical criticism is mentioned, that the teacher uses it to defend the Torah against apikursim, but I do not have knowledge of the subject matter or course structure.
I seem to remember some issues with improper art in required art classes either because of looking at places of worship of other religions, or improperly clothed women, and I believe one was allowed to be exempted and write a paper instead.
But these are beside the point. While time is short, briefly, the main objection was to any college period. Many gedolim were against all secular knowledge. This is true to day in EY where even high school is off limits to chareidim, and schools like Maarava which is an American style high school ran into tremendous opposition, and had to agree to go outside Yerushalayim. In America, the Mir doesn’t allow college at all, and ends seder at 8 pm to make it impossible. (I love Reb Shmuel Berenbaum ZTL, and he was at my chasuna. Nevertheless, I do not subsribe to that worldview.) My point is that gedolim shried eish lehava against college. They always stressed full time learning and bitachon for parnasa. While one might have thought they would be maskim to YU, many were not, and since just about nobody would be able to find fault with a school which is separate, shomer shabbos, kosher food and half a day learning, and seemed to be a great way to get around all the problems of college, they went overboard to try to find any fault possible and constantly put it down so nobody would go. But again, the reason was because they held it was bitul Torah.
However, today, people have become so confused about things, because of all the harsh words, that there are many yeshivishe people who actually believe YU is worse than a goyishe college. Anybody who believes so really needs a checkup. The gedolim of the previous generation of course knew that YU was far better than any goyishe college, and if one was going to go full time (not just to night school) that was the best place without any shaila. However, because of all the loshon hora, todays generation of kannaim, many of whom don’t know miyminom lsmolam except how to scream, have invented this total mishigas that YU is worse than a goyishe college campus.
While there may be problems with certain courses, that is not why gedolim opposed it. They did it because they opposed any secular studies, period. Had they not fought against it, but instead sat down with the hanhala and said we understand you are tyring to make a frum place where one can learn and make a parnasa as well, and we will totally support you, except we have issues XYZ with courses ABC, there would have easily been compromises made and we would have achdus in the klal. But they didn’t want to hear of secular studies at all. Read Reb Moshe about going to medical school, and even studying secular studies during bein hazmanim, etc. Read about Reb Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld who would not allow it. Do a search on Rav Tzvei and Touro, and you will find a long essay where he screams against Touro for either men or women! The European Roshei Yeshiva simply felt there was no heter not to learn full time, and also possibly in Europe, college was mainly philosophy, not for parnasa. Rav Volbe write in Alei Shur vol. 1 that theoretically Torah and Mada is a good idea for an institution, but we don’t have a mesorah or leaders who went that route who can guide us on how to do it and build such an institution where everything is totally OK. Whatever the case may be, I firmly believe that any of the emesdig gedolim and poskim if asked whether to go to a secular campus which is mixed and has far worse problems or to YU would never in a moment say a secular college is better. It is only the terrible sinas chinam which is caused by screaming and people who don’t understand, but just jump on a bandwagon of excitement of a good fight who would ever be crazy enough to say YU is worse than a secular college. It goes against any drop of sechel. Whatever problems exist at YU will exist 1,000 fold on a goyishe campus.
I don’t have all the answers on how to run a college at the highest Torah levels and the highest academmic levels simultaneously, but if people wanted to, I am sure they would find a way. Instead, because fighting and bad feelings have gotten involved (what else is new) the two sides are not speaking. The younger generation is so confused that it actually thinks YU is worse than a coed dorm.