I’m a graduate student at a state university, and I can tell you what “critical thinking” means to academics.

Our “critical thinking rubric” can be found here:

http://wsuctprojectdev.wsu.edu/ctr_docs/CIT%20Rubric%202006.pdf

If you read this you will find that it includes all the post-modern crap–you’re supposed to think about whether your text is written by a privileged white male, for example. All the academic shibboleths are to be kowtowed to.

Anything broad enough to include both physics and women’s studies is going to be nonsense–such as where it says you are supposed to “integrate different disciplinary and epistemological ways of knowing”. So, when a feminist philosopher says that E = mc^2 is a gendered equation because the speed of light is privileged over speeds that women might find more relevant, and if I am scornful about that statement in a paper, then I am supposed to fail at critical thinking.