If you think Ho Chi Minh studying with Vietnamese radicals in France is equivalent to some middle class kid in America doing an Econ degree I don’t know what to tell ya. For every revolutionary that was highly educated there’s another that came from nothing. Malcolm X radicalised in prison after a life of petty crime.

If the American college system is such a fertile breeding ground for revolutionary thought, where are all the revolutionaries? Surely it should have produced a single one in the last fifty years?

I’d say like so many things, academia has been almost fully captured and neutered by capital. Unions were once a radical force of worker power, this is generally untrue now as well. Do colleges give some people the critical thinking skills that point them on the road to socialism? Sure. But any worker can go down the same road without the formal education. Not to mention, universities create plenty of reactionaries as well - “Chicago Boys” anyone?