@BeeDAre I do agree that there are interesting intellectual conversations at CCs as well. Just not as often because people go home after class. Its a lot more intense when you have dorms. It is also not about eliteness - I just believe that some colleges seek out and attract the intellectually curious and they are different from most standard colleges and CCs. Reed cant be considered elite compared to say a Yale but having visited Reed - there is a reason for it being labeled as the most intellectual college in america by CTCL, not Yale. Yale attracts the academically brilliant ones first - they may or may not be intellectually curious about arcane topics. Reed seems to have the opposite identity.
@dfbdfb I agree with you too about people finding all kinds of forums to debate intellectual topics. Heck we all decided to have a lively debate about intellectual debate on this forum! But where do you expect such discussions to be MORE commonplace? CCs? an engineering school in say china? LACs such as Wesleyan? The US armed forces colleges? Religious schools? And the answer to your sidebar is “all of those and more” - if it is debatable it is an intellectual topic of discussion. Funny but my 1st degree was in chemical engineering and found linguistics a beautiful subject and ended up taking 2 additional courses in linguistics than originally planned.
And @OHMomof2 is absolutely correct - we do have a greater proclivity to engage in such conversations when we are in the dorms. I remember sitting though an 4 hour + session with 5 of my dorm buddies crammed into 1 little room arguing about how to prove the non-existence of the universe using pure logic. I’m sure its the same 25 years later.