Here are a couple of quotations from University of Texas’s President Faulkner in his State of the University Address on September 21, 2001. He discusses, among other things, the idea that part of the purpose of a University is to promote civilization.

“Over thousands of years, we have developed the knowledge, wisdom, and practices that make up human civilization. In the course of those ages, our species has achieved beyond all others who inhabit the planet—as far as we know, even beyond all others who inhabit the universe. But despite the success of humankind, the fabric of our civilization is thin, and not integral to our animal being. The base spirits within us remain and are exposed when the fabric is removed.”
….

“President Lamar set the tone for educational achievement in Texas when he urged the fledgling nation to develop not one, but two universities, and he sponsored the commitment of public land to support them. This was in 1838. Texas was on the frontier. The daily goal of individuals was survival, not high culture. The Texas population—everyone included, part of the civil society or not—was only 50,000. The whole nation was no bigger than present-day UT Austin. Five square miles to every person. There were few schools and no cities. A university must have been practically the furthest thing from the minds of most people as an element essential to the future. Even Lamar had never attended a university and could only have had second-hand understanding of social benefits that could be derived from them. Yet he sought two. And not colleges, but universities.”

Is the institutionalization of learning, aka education, helpful for society? necessary?

Thinking of it, Education has probably been around, if not in the ‘mass production’ style that’s in the mode today, at least in a mentoring/apprenticing fashion as long as there has been civilization. What does this mean, I wonder.