The cultural mission of universities

Over the last two decades, there has been a wide debate about the so‑called third mission of the University. Two discourses have occupied the proscenium: the transfer and innovation of knowledge and corporate social responsibility. In this article we postulate that both these ideas respond to approaches that do not fully take the history and status of universities as a public service into account. In contrast, we argue that the third mission, both in terms of history and in terms of the normative and pragmatic statutes, instead corresponds to cultur