Some observations about what college should accomplish

The habits of mind that colleges purport to disseminate in the classroom—often described as critical thinking (the demand for careful analysis; the examination of intuitive and counterintuitive hypotheses; the raising of questions; the tolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty, and fallibility; and the pursuit of curiosity)—are deemed not only useful but also desirable for the duration of one's life. Utility and virtue are not understood as being in conflict. Explicit in the ideals articulated in every undergraduate catalog is the conviction that graduates will become engaged and therefore better citizens, neighbors, and professionals.

Leon Botstein (2005). The curriculum and college life: confronting unfulfilled promises. In Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow, Declining by Degrees. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (pp. 210-211)

What this society wants of those who graduate from its schools and colleges with degrees in the humanities—as opposed to what many of those who claim to speak for it say it wants—are, at worst, docility and grammatical competence, at best, reliability and a high level of textual skills. What this society does not want from our educational institutions is a group of people imbued with critical skills and values that are frankly antagonistic to those that prevail in our marketplaces, courts and legislative bodies.

Robert Scholes (1999). The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline. New Haven: Yale University Press. (p.19)

Wilhelm von Humboldt (June 22, 1767 – April 8, 1835) was a Prussian philosopher who was the originator of our modern conception of the university; consider Wikipedia's description of his idea of what a university should be -- and to see how successful his idea was, try to think of anything ELSE a university could be today:

Humboldt's model was based on two ideas of the Enlightenment: the individual and the world citizen. Humboldt believed that the university (and education in general, as in the Prussian education system) should enable students to become autonomous individuals and world citizens by developing their own reasoning powers in an environment of academic freedom. Humboldt envisaged an ideal of Bildung, education in a broad sense, which aimed not merely to provide professional skills through schooling along a fixed path but rather to allow students to build individual character by choosing their own way...

Humboldt believed that teaching should be guided by current research, and that research should be unbiased and independent from ideological, economic, political or religious influences. The Humboldtian model strives for unconditional academic freedom in the intellectual investigation of the world, both for teachers and for students. Study should be guided by humanistic ideals and free thought, and knowledge should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition, or dogma... Humboldt regarded philosophy as the link between the different academic disciplines, which include both humanities and natural sciences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_education