> What sorts of learning patterns in a person make them "college material"?

Any that are self motivated.

> If a student's personal way of learning best is incompatible with their assigned professor, are they not college material?

Honestly, no. It shows a lack of (a) institutional-navigational skills, e.g. change your professor, (b) flexibility to different learning "styles" (which are increasingly being shown to be a myth) and/or (c) ability to circumvent adversity, e.g. by reading the textbook, finding online videos or hunting down a study group. That doesn't mean they can't learn some of these skills. But if they don't have by them by the end of freshman year, college is a waste of time for them.

Modern college students are basically afforded the freedoms and privileges of a classical scholar with a wealthy patron. Their day-to-day needs are taken care of. They have access to massive libraries. They have access to lectures and professors at office hours. And they navigate all of it with a pre-selected cohort of similar students.

(To be clear, I think one can be tremendously successful and valuable without completing or even attending college. As in no ambitious path is actually closed off from you. Unless it's research.)

> That doesn't mean they can't learn some of these skills. But if they don't have by them by the end of freshman year, college is a waste of time for them.

I disagree, because muddling through one way or another grants the salary paper that makes it easier to have success in the rest of life.

> To be clear, I think one can be tremendously successful and valuable without completing or even attending college. As in no ambitious path is actually closed off from you. Unless it's research.

Again, I disagree.I mean, I agree on its face, in that a sufficiently motivated and capable person is capable of achieving success with or without a college degree.

But we're talking about people who aren't motivated and capable. The best path to something resembling success for people who lack the motivation and capability to be successful on their own, is to muddle through the university system and by whatever necessary means get the piece of paper.

College at large is not a waste of time for these people. Until the downstream society stops valuing a degree as it does, time spent getting the degree is not wasted, because it yielded the degree. If the paper is had, the time was well spent, regardless of how that time was actually spent or whether anything was learned.