Having worked with university foundations for many years, you are right - they do aspire to this. The rank and file believe it.
But it’s not altruistic, they are getting paid. They prefer donations because, in our gilded age, they are a more reliable source of tuition dollars.
Higher ed today fails a very basic test - they have no practice around student success. Startups like SkillShare started with that in mind.
Many universities have launched initiatives and programs in the past few years to drive “student success,” but they are entirely dependent on outside providers - whose recommendations they actively resist. It is bananas.
Universities’ measure of student success? Do students drop out.
Once again, entirely self-serving.
Talk to veteran higher ed faculty & staff - they all know it.
Universities don’t actually know what their value is, so they just keep trying to pretend to offer what people wanted in times past in an era that has no use for any of it.
They are a brutal application of enlightenment thinking in a world that does not play by those rules.
They know they are playing a smoke & mirrors game. The average student is 27 and has a kid, yet they still sell the “college experience,” mostly to foreign nationals with rich parents. It is corrupt from beginning to end.
Do not pay for college, kids. Read “DIY University.”