Universities were largely started by people with convictions that there is universal knowledge or truth, and that the pursuit of that truth shapes people in ways that are highly beneficial to society. This is where the idea or peer review originated---no person can grasp the truth fully or comprehensively, thus to advance human knowledge peer review was necessary (Peer review, like higher education, is deeply broken). Today western culture has lost confidence that truth exists or can be found. One can see this by looking at some of the oldest universities' mottos, particularly by paying attention to how the mottos have changed and/or the informal mottos in use.
Harvard Motto [1636]: Veritas ("Truth"), but historically it was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae ("Truth for Christ and Church").[1]
William & Mary [1693] (Who knows the original and current mottos - I didn't find them with a quick search), but the charter calls for founding "a certain place of universal study" for training Christian pastors and to educate youth.[2]
Yale University motto [1701]: Lux et veritas (Latin) אורים ותומים (Hebrew) Motto in English: Light and truth[3]
Princeton Motto [1746]: Dei Sub Numine Viget On seal: Vet[us] Nov[um] Testamentum Motto in English: Under God's Power She Flourishes On seal: Old Testament and New Testament Informal motto. In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity[4]
So, I would say that university education has already collapsed, in the sense that its devolved from a mission of education in formative truth for life to its current amalgamation of gaining job/career skills, academic research, sports, elite networking, or party-years paid for by debt or parents.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Harvard_Universit...
[2] William & Mary's charter begins,
"Forasmuch as our well-beloved and faithful subjects, constituting the General Assembly of our Colony of Virginia, have had it in their minds, and have proposed to themselves, to the end that the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a seminary of ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the glory of Almighty God; to make, found and establish a certain place of universal study, or perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences..."
https://web.archive.org/web/20080919125611/http://www.swem.w...