What's the point of a University?

Great blog from Insider Higher Ed was featured today.  Here is a little taste:

So then what is the point of a course in higher education? More generally, what is the purpose of higher education? Are we to educate or are we to socialize and sermonize? Do we build knowledge or provide practical, hard skills for students to use in work and play? I thought I knew. Now, I'm not so sure. At least, I am beginning to understand the disconnect I feel sometimes between myself and my students. We are here, in the university, for very, very different purposes.


Here is the full article if you are interested.


http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/what_is_a_course_in_higher_ed


Now that I have graduated from College, I find myself looking back at my education over the years.  What has it been about?  Have my educational endeavors crafted me into the sort of human that I want to be?  Has my pursuit of the Liberal Arts contributed to my understanding of what Aristotle terms "the good life"?  Was Northwestern College successful in instilling into me a greater appreciation of the humanities.  I believe so.  Now that it's over, I don't find myself relieved or looking forward to putting my major to use.  I know that sounds insane, but I look at it as proof that the University system did not fail me.  I haven't graduated with thousands of dollars of debt with only a skill set that will become obsolete within a few years without continued training.  Instead, I have graduated with a greater understanding of what it means to be human.  I am sad about leaving college.  For me, college was not boring classes with tests that did not matter.  College was about developing critical thinking skills, joining a conversation about ideas and beliefs that have guided humanity throughout the centuries, contributing to my understanding of the world in which I live.  Sure, I may not have a specific job that my major prepared me for, but if I wanted that, I would have gone to a tech school or some other type of schooling.  And that is the question the blog post from Inside Higher Ed raises, if the point of the University is not supposed to be about job training, what is it supposed to be about.  Fortunately, the author doesn't provide you an answer.  Instead the author requires you to think and engage with the question.  Are you up to the task?  Or has your 4+ years of undergraduate schooling rendered critical thinking a foreign concept?