Question

What's the function of a university? 一所大学拥有什么功能？

我要准备一个英文演讲，麻烦大家帮忙想一下。要用英文哦~~谢谢啦

Answer 1

下文是百度上别人写的，希望对你有借鉴作用。

What's the function of a university?

I am honoured by your invitation to address you at
the opening of another session, and I trust that my
choice of subject does not alarm you. I offered to
speak to you on the Meaning of a University, but it is
no part of my purpose to spend time on the definition
of familiar terms, or to attempt to extract surprising
lessons from the etymology of a word that is in daily
use. My interest in the subject is of another kind. By
the accidents of life I have had to do with many Uni-
versities in many places; in London, where they examine
without misgiving or remorse ; in India, where the
University of London found a congenial soil for
multiplying all its worst vices ; at Oxford and Cam-
bridge, where Time and old Custom and the delights
of communal life have hallowed even the frailties of
these ancient institutions, so that their very faults have
something pleasant and respectable about them ; in
Scotland, where the Universities are truly national, and
prepare the chosen youth of the nation for work in the
learned professions ; last, and not least significant, in the
newer provincial Universities of England, Manchester
and Liverpool, where the activities of a University have
been recognized as essential to a full-grown municipal
civilization. With all these I have had to do, and
I should be very dull and incurious if I had never
troubled myself to ask what purposes they have in
common, and what is the meaning of a University.