It’s less that it’s bad for her and more that it’s another way the US is dismantling their own soft power. There are long term advantages to having the rich and powerful from around the world get their upper education in your universities.

OP: I want people to think for ourselves.

My understanding of your point: People have never done that because no thought is truly independent. Modern complexity relies on thought that builds upon others.

My point: Sure, but that’s also a narrow and ungenerous interpretation of the term “independent thought” as per OP’s usage. It’s closer to critical thought than silo’d thought developed from the ground up.

Ah, I haven’t looked at others’ responses. I can see how responding to many different people gets messy.

But to answer your question, because I took the time to formulate my thoughts for you, and I responded directly to things you said in your comments. I also asked you directly “How so? What’s your alternative assertion.” Which was a good faith attempt to better understand what you meant.

Well you didn’t respond to my questions and you’re vaguely referencing our other comments instead. It’s not effective communication and leads me to think you didn’t understand my comments. You seem to be into math, so I’ll put it this way,

Be explicit, show your work: premises–>arguments–>conclusion

This has very little to do with the criticism given by the first commenter.

How do? What would your alternative assertion be on the topic?

My comment doesn’t suggest people have to run their own research study or develop their own treatise on every topic. It suggests people have make a conscious choice, preferably with reasonable judgment, about which sources to trust and to develop a lay understanding of the argument or conclusion they’re repeating. Otherwise you end up with people on the left and right reflexively saying “communism bad” or “capitalism bad” because their social media environment repeats it a lot, but they’d be hard pressed to give even a loosly representative definition of either.

The usage of “independent thought” has never been “independent of all outside influence”, it has simply meant going through the process of reasoning–thinking through a chain of logic–instead of accepting and regurgitating the conclusions of others without any of one’s own reasoning. It’s a similar lay meaning as being an independent adult. We all rely on others in some way, but an independent adult can usually accomplish activities of daily living through their own actions.