Universities exist within the river of time, so we have treated them historically. They have stood since Magna Carta, with their structures essentially unchanged. Universities are also institutions, so we have examined their functions. The basic functions, educating the faculty, teaching the students, and collecting knowledge, remain robust. Universities are an existential necessity in western culture.

Universities have stood for 900 years in Western culture with most of their institutional structures essentially unchanged. They still serve three basic functions: educating the faculty, teaching students and gathering knowledge. Funding is, and always has been, the main difficulty within universities and most of the problems critics point to can be traced to a lack of it--universities, it seems, are always in crisis. The authors demonstrate that universities are in fact doing well. They generate an immense amount of research and drive the development of new technologies. On the whole, faculty members teach pretty well and students are in fact learning (at least something), and the challenges of inadequate funding are faced with adequate success.