Universities once presented a view of the ends of life, and the studies pursued were directed to those ends.  They were preserves for the encouragement of higher human alternatives.  To become pious, wise, or prudent were the goals.  …The merely technical things were not a part of the university.  Now all agreement about the goals has disappeared.  …The serious problem is that our studies do not even raise these questions any longer.  [Today] the trivial is well-known; the great is left to passion and private taste.  The university is in better possession of the means to ends than ever before; but never has it been able to shed so little light on these ends.

Allan Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs, Essays 1960-1990