I think for some people universities are just the way for forcing them to study - without it many people would not study on your own. There are different reasons why they would not do it: laziness, no study plans, no ability to study "alone" and so on. Imagine a world where there is not any forced education even for children. Do you think that people would care less or more about learning? Of course there would people who could improve themselves, focus more on their goals and so on. But also there would be a lot people who just do not want to learn anything. Just give them shelter, food, let them have fun, sex, partying and some work from time to time so they could get money. World would be so different place but... who knows maybe it could work after really long period of time full of experiments, trials and errors.