I read Cracked almost daily, even though its articles are often mistake-riddled and should be read with enough salt to cause your doctor to worry about your sodium intake.
This is a John Cheese article. He's from a poor, abusive family in a rural part of Illinois, and a lot of his articles are specific to that experience. It's fairly likely he went to one of the universities named [cardinal direction] Illinois University. At one point he mentions Southern Illinois University, although he doesn't say he went there. He's geographically closest to Eastern Illinois University. SIU is generally considered better than EIU, but I'm not sure the difference matters much. I did part of a master's degree at EIU, and I see what he's talking about in his article, but a lot of it isn't generalizable to everyone. My undergrad was at a relatively high-ranked small liberal arts college (about 1600 students), so I've seen a couple very different sides of college (/uni for non-USians) in the US.
I have no idea what Israeli universities are like. One of the most important variables is how much you have to pay for it. If Israel is like much of continental Europe and university is close to free, a lot of what he says won't apply. He's poor and the majority of his problems with college have to do, in some way or another, with the financial aspects of it, which are unusually bad in the US (and increasingly so in the rest of the Anglophone world because they like to adopt our bad ideas).
I'll talk about EIU specifically so you can get an idea of where he's coming from. It is a fairly low-ranked state university whose students come mostly from Illinois (especially downstate, but there are a fair number from the Chicago area). It is predominantly an undergrad college and also has a variety of master's degrees, but does not have any doctoral programs. Here are his points, and how the sort of school he probably went to influenced his conclusions:
5 - The first two years of college are a repeat of high school: US high schools outside of wealthy areas aren't exactly known for their academic prowess, and universities that take mostly "average" HS students find that they have to repeat all the HS material over again in the first two years of college if the students are ever going to learn anything that builds on that. Based on his other articles, John Cheese appears to have been an underachieving but bright person, so he would have been made to take the sorts of classes where people actually have to be taught how to use a library. This experience can be avoided somewhat by testing out of and/or having an HS record that indicated you didn't need remedial classes like that. No matter the student, though, intro science courses do have to cover some ground already taught in HS just to make sure everyone is on the same page.
4 - You'll be forced to take classes that have nothing to do with anything: Well, yes and no. Most colleges and universities in the US have distribution requirements, and while broad knowledge is part of being educated, lots of elective classes actually are wastes of time and money. It's hard to know which ones will be before actually taking them. But many of these can be avoided by talking to people ahead of time, and it's important to know things that don't directly relate to your career, so as to avoid becoming a narrow-minded robot.
3 - Failing will cost you severely: Failing is bad in general, but it's especially bad for people who need financial aid to make it through college, which is probably at least 80% of the US student population. Failing courses early on can cut these people off from further financial aid, which can shut them out of college entirely. Any loans they took out to fail those courses will still be there collecting interest, and if they are allowed to retake those courses, they will go even further into debt than they otherwise would.
2 - The friends you make will be temporary: I made the best friends I ever expect to make in college, and I am still very close to quite a few people. I probably learned more from them than from my classes. But it's quite possible not to make good friends, especially if you go to a school that doesn't concentrate the sorts of people you'll want to be friends with. Your mileage may vary.
1 - College isn't the booze-fueled orgy that movies depict: Anybody expecting movies to accurately depict reality is in for disappointment. There is lots of booze and lots of sex and lots of booze-fueled sex at virtually all colleges. But it all depends on who you meet and what social groups you end up in. If you are introverted and tend to shy away from parties, the number of booze-fueled orgies you find yourself in may be zero. This isn't something to be ashamed of.
