What are universities for?

I've had this lecture opened in my browser for months, and have just got round to listening to it. Here's a sentence to whet your appetite:

And yet, if it is true that university education — especially in the arts and humanities — is not about the growth of certain intellectual and social virtues, then it does become very hard to see why the study of landscape painting or medieval North African history or Byron’s reception among women is anything but a private and rather frivolous indulgence.

Lots of stimulating stuff there. And a full transcript. What are Universities For? by Professor Nigel Biggar, a talk for to the Oxford Graduate Christian Union on 17 January, 2011.