The University’s Purpose

The currency of the university is knowledge. ?The university disseminates, creates and applies knowledge.? These activities can be thought of as the university's three missions: To generate knowledge through research, to distribute it via education, and to apply it through various academic and extra-academic endeavours.?

I have had the pleasure of giving presentations on information days for new university employees several times. I’ve always asked about our purpose: “Why do our neighbours pay our salaries?” I mostly got answers like “to educate” or “to research,” but as we know, those are missions. The missions describe what we do, and the purpose describes why we do it—and as we know, questions starting with "why" are the most important.

This important question has an easy answer: The purpose of the university is to create a better future.??

Or, to be more specific, adding the tripartite mission, we could say that universities disseminate, develop, and apply knowledge to create a better future.

Two Philosophical Trajectories

Universities typically pursue their purpose along two distinct philosophical trajectories. The first centres on knowledge itself—creating, sharing and applying it on the assumption that intellectual advancement inherently contributes to human progress, albeit through pathways that often prove circuitous and unpredictable.

The second trajectory aims more directly at societal benefit, explicitly applying academic resources to address concrete challenges in economic and social development.

This duality—or schism, if one prefers dramatic terminology—represents the classical tension within academia: whether universities exist primarily to serve knowledge (which may eventually benefit society) or to serve society. Different institutions position themselves at different points along this spectrum. A Nordic university college might emphasise applied research, and an American liberal arts institution might celebrate a broad humanistic education. In contrast, a research-intensive university might dedicate itself primarily to expanding intellectual frontiers, regardless of immediate utility.

The Shifting Emphasis Towards Impact

Governments broadly recognise that curiosity-driven research yields substantial long-term dividends (there is just no way to guess which research). At the same time, they are increasingly asking universities to strengthen their society-focused approach, particularly emphasising the third mission: knowledge application. This shift does not imply that every research project must demonstrate immediate practical utility or focus on societal improvement. Rather, it suggests that universities should develop more deliberate strategies for societal impact.

And universities do. When emphasising the third mission, universities contribute to society through an impressive array of activities: public service, community partnerships, engagement with innovation ecosystems, lifelong learning programmes, mission-directed research, technology transfer initiatives, governance participation and regional economic development. Many academics have long engaged in such activities individually; the difference now is increasing formal recognition.

Reconciling Apparent Contradictions

Academics occasionally conflate the knowledge-focused approach with the university's fundamental purpose, suggesting that the university exists primarily to advance knowledge for knowledge's own sake. However, its stakeholders frequently hold different views. For most observers beyond academic cloisters, the pursuit of knowledge solely for its intrinsic value does not represent a divine right but a pragmatic arrangement with acceptable returns on investment—a social contract predicated on the understanding that today's rarefied inquiry may become tomorrow's transformative innovation.

In the end, what matters is that each university lands on a deliberate balance between the two approaches. Rather than viewing the knowledge-centred and society-oriented approaches as mutually exclusive, one might better understand them as complementary aspects of complex institutions. The beauty of universities lies precisely in this complexity—their capacity to simultaneously pursue knowledge for its intrinsic value while applying that knowledge to address pressing challenges.

By embracing this duality, universities fulfil their fundamental purpose of creating a better future through the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge. In an era increasingly focused on demonstrable impact, institutions would do well to articulate clearly how their various activities contribute to this overarching purpose.

The university continues its centuries-old project of enhancing human understanding and improving the human condition. Despite shifting emphases and approaches, this project remains as vital as ever.?