I think the pure purpose of a university should be to mould students into critical thinkers and innovative mindset that would ultimately add value to the society so they can contribute back as tax payers to help the next generation.
The cycle breaks if the university suddenly produces a group of people that cannot contribute in any meaningful way back. In that case it’s totally fair to ask where did we go wrong and how can we fix it and get back on track rather than trying to keep the broken system
It depends on who gets to define "meaningful". There are a lot of things that I think are meaningful that you probably don't. And while many would say that STEM automatically qualifies, I don't think that really holds up to scrutiny.
I think it’s quite easy to decide. If the students at the end of the study can contribute to the society as tax payers to fund the next generation, then what they have studied is meaningful. It doesn’t have to be STEM necessarily.
The cycle breaks if the university suddenly produces a group of people that cannot contribute in any meaningful way back. In that case it’s totally fair to ask where did we go wrong and how can we fix it and get back on track rather than trying to keep the broken system