Years ago, I was attending a seminar for new university presidents where our conversation turned to the greatest challenges we expected to face. The discussion soon became a catalogue of conflicts: controversial speakers, offensive faculty remarks and when a president should intervene in crises. After listening for several minutes, I posed a different pair of questions.

“What is the purpose of our universities? Why do they exist?”

The room fell silent.

That silence has stayed with me. It revealed a challenge deeper than any controversy of the moment. The crisis facing American higher education today is not merely ideological; it is teleological – a crisis of purpose.

The “call to action” recently issued by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon provides universities an opportunity to recover that purpose.

Reflecting on what universities offer society

The erosion of public trust in higher education and the troubling decline in the share of Americans enrolled in postsecondary education reflect a system in need of serious reevaluation. The secretary’s call for transparency offers a way for the public to better understand how universities approach matters such as admissions, research, affordability, academic rigor and artificial intelligence.

However, none of these questions can be addressed apart from the deeper question of purpose. Before a university can define the practices that govern how it operates, it must answer why it exists.

Purpose is not a slogan to be placed on a website. It is the foundation from which institutional........

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