But to stretch my analogy, very few people live in the living room only. Classes, academic activities, sports teams, your dorm where an evangelical pro-lifer is stuck with a girl who already had an abortion in one room and where a gay farmer boy and a sheltered foreign student from Saudi Arabia are in another room -- those are where your ideas and beliefs are challenged!

Depends on the college and the administration really.

If I take a car to an establishment labelling themselves as a 'Car Wash', and their washing method consists of flinging mud all over the car....said establishment isn't a very good car wash, is it?

The word "college" is much more ambiguous than "car wash".

Latin root: collegium: 'partnership, association'

Certain religious colleges for example tend to shelter and reinforce their respective beliefs more than challenge them.

So they're not very good car washes.