The uprooting of universities and their subsequent erosion as research university in the Humboldtian sense (in the US the John Hopkins University can be conside

The uprooting of universities and their subsequent erosion as research university in the Humboldtian sense (in the US the John Hopkins University can be considered its first model) of "unity in teaching and research" based on a holistic concept of Bildung (education) in contrast - but also in addition - to a mere vocational training has very much to do with the neo-liberalization of higher education. In Europe this became known as the "Bologna process" in which established "academic degrees" literally - in a EU-bureaucratic hunch and self-aggrandizement - got thrown away overnight (in Germany: Diplom, Magister) and then modernized, accordingly rated and standardized in a modular fashion, repurposed for the international/European (labour) market. The faculties and universities themselves from then on were run in a more and more managerial fashion with "operating numbers" and by winning state-funded budgets ("exellency" programs) and by efficiently recruiting third-party sponsoring. For a typical (german) undergraduate student there isn't much a difference between school and university, anymore. Most Gen X'ers (and Baby-Boomers for that matter) will readily tell you how they for the first time had to learn to resort to self-reliant learning in want of detailed instructions (like in school) but also began to appreciate the less strict scheduling not only for partying but for developing their critical thinking in heated arguments with peers or when confronted with challenging ideas. This is mostly gone, now, a big part of that former public space has vanished. For attaining craftmanship a particular skillset for a particular field, universities were never a good place to begin with, that's what internships and later your chosen vocations are for. But if they don't prepare you for the labour market and don't provide you with some kind of Humboldtian ideal - a universal starting point with sufficent leisure in pondering about the right/critical questions to ask in a nourishing environment - so what are they actually for?