Phil Cohen highlights a contradiction about modern universities in his A Place To Think? Some Reflections on the Idea of the University in the Age of the Information Economy, at New Formations useful digital archive. He says:

Take for example the recent furore in the UK over the Education Secretary’s attack on some of our Ivory Tower dwellers for failing, as he saw it, to help our economy and society deal with the negative effects of globalisation. In the comments page of the Times Higher Educational Supplement there was not a Vice Chancellor who did not protest and declare allegiance to the idea of the university as a privileged
site for the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and truth. Those same VCs who have been the most enthusiastic in ensuring that every aspect of university life conforms to corporate norms of management accountability, who are the keenest promoters of business links and the commercial applications of research, are the very ones who with shining eyes conjure up images of the mediaeval cloisters where scholars pursue their studies uncontaminated by the ways of the world.