The purpose of the university has always been certification.

“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."

- Will Hunting

Not always [1]

Having gone to university in Germany, there are glimpses of this ideal, but they're mostly faint memories enshrined on faded plaques around the campus. I did have an old geezer prof (90+ years old) that went to the very same university over half a century ago and showed us his diploma: greek, latin, humanities, ... for a technical diploma, no less!

I do still cringe a little when we get newjoiners fresh out of university proudly proclaiming "Yeah, no can do, we didn't learn that at university". Yes, obviously, university is not an apprenticeship. You learn how to learn and then apply that to unknown-to-you problems. Oddly enough ChatGPT seems to have brought a change to that mindset, but Im not sure if it did so for the better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...