I'm not sure it's exclusive to Universities -- consider that the majority of jobs that don't require higher education typically have a very direct focus on "suc

I'm not sure it's exclusive to Universities -- consider that the majority of jobs that don't require higher education typically have a very direct focus on "success" and this is the metric used for performance, I think it's just generally pervasive in business to want to see a specific desired outcome. "Line goes up" is a meme, but this is what runs a lot of businesses. I left University with a research mindset, which was further developed by living with a bunch of people in deep sciences who thought very research-like about everything in life (to a fault I'd say), but the end result was I ended up becoming a lot more analytical whereas I had entered University very outcome oriented. As I transitioned more and more into technical items, I understood how this approach was so much more useful. My classes in University were not technical but more research oriented, and while there were deadlines, there was not a specific outcome sought, just present a position, research it, and defend it. I believe this has done pretty well for me. It becomes a lot easier to solve issues (technical or otherwise) by understanding the full business rules of a situation and not being attached to specific outcomes but instead just implementing what makes sense. When I still did support and research, it became a lot easier to understand very challenging issues and getting time to research more by simply explaining how I understood the issue so far, what I had researched, why I thought this was relevant, and my next steps. The hardest clients weren't ones with very difficult and complex issues but instead the outcomes oriented ones that needed a solution X by Y date, Y being arbitrarily picked. The answer given in most cases was not to these clients' satisfaction ("we can make "something" by Y, but understand it will be a kludge. Or we can find the real answer, and I can't tell you when that happens since we don't know what the answer is yet."), but typically there is _someone_ at the client org higher up that understands the options and wants the real answer and stamps out any idea of arbitrary deadlines and instead accepted reasonable and proper updates on the investigation. It's not always the case as sometimes Outcome Orientated is just an institutional pillar for a company, but often it worked. My favorite part of actual research is realizing in situations when Z is not working, do you really need Z at all? I've solved more coding issues by simply not trying to shoehorn in Z or battling with Z's nuances than I have by writing novels of code to work with Z. The owners for Z typically get grumpy about the situation, but it's understandable they have an investment in their item, so they tend to be defensive.