Fatal impact theory 

As schools are for education, so universities are for higher education. In a civilised society, children should leave school literate, numerate and with some knowledge of science, history and culture. But society also needs an elite educated to a higher level. Universities are for the preparation of the next generation of doctors, United Nations interpreters, lawyers, structural engineers, archaeologists, nuclear-weapon designers, literary critics, astronomers, economists and so forth.

That’s the short answer. The long answer would require a great deal more than is found in Stefan Collini’s brisk and very witty book. It would need to range far and wide both historically and geographically, to tell us about the centrality of theology in the medieval university, the political imperative behind the humanist revolution in 16th-century Cambridge, the emergence of the PhD in 19th-century Germany, the relative prestige of the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure, the mixed ecology of the American system in which a first-class undergraduate education can be obtained at a ‘college’ as opposed to a ‘university’, and much more.