This is not at all what most students go to undergrad for.

For some reason in discussions like this, things are always framed as if everyone is going to Yale.

Everyone I know including myself, went to college because that is just what you were supposed to do. That was my mom's dream for me to get a degree and I didn't want to disappoint my mom.

I am sure there were really smart kids in my high school that were figuring out post graduate network strategy but that was hardly the majority.

I even had a friend that dropped out of high school that ended up going to community college. He wasn't exactly figuring out the eigenvector centrality of the nodes of his general studies classmates.

Correct. Social pressure is what pushes most people there.

As a result of this social pressure, people do tend to go off the rails when there (having fun) very few give a fck about studying - who cares, there's no reward for getting anything beyond 60-70%.