[umanwizard]

No they don’t “have” to do any of this as evidenced by the fact that the US is the only country where it happens. In most countries it would (rightly) be considered strange to care how good someone is at sports or marching band when evaluating their ability to study academic subjects (the actual purpose of a university).

[its_ethan]

That feels like a fairly narrow view of what the purpose of a university is.

Look at the charter of any university and they do not just say: "create students who excel in their academic subject of choice".

The vast, vast majority of higher education mission statements/charters include goals like: "helping students develop their identity", "pursuing meaning", "strengthening community", "sharing perspectives", "helping others", etc. etc. etc.

Things like "can this person work on as a team (did they play sports?)" or "have they been a part of a community (like marching band?)" are hugely important for building a community at the university that can successfully achieve those mission statements.

[umanwizard]

> Look at the charter of any university

Any university in the world? Or any university in the very idiosyncratic US system?

Again, nobody else does stuff like this, and their universities seem to be working fine.

[its_ethan]

Yea I'd say any university. Here's the results of maybe 3 minutes of quick googling for universities around the world:

University of Mumbai: "The Fruit of Learning is Character and Righteous Conduct" - highlights character and behavior as key to learning

University of Tokyo: "The University of Tokyo aims to be a world-class platform for research and education [and] ... nurture global leaders with a strong sense of public responsibility and a pioneering spirit [and] ... to expand the boundaries of human knowledge in partnership with society." - yes it's academically focussed, but again highlights strong civic duty and partnerships

University of Sydney: "We make lives better by producing leaders of society and equipping our people with leadership qualities so they can serve our communities at every level." - pretty focussed on creating leaders who serve communitities

Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has a listed value: "AAU pursues innovation, research, and development through team spirit and partnership within the institution, with the communities it serves and with its global partners."

So.. yea most universities? Are there exceptions that are just ultra focussed on being exclusively robot-generating education factories? Sure. I'm not sure where you live that they are so common, but a quick survey of Africa, Asia, and Australia I was able to find universities that check the box for what I claimed.

But again, sorry for being so US-centric on the US website focussed on discussion (mostly) US news (and in this case discussing literally only US universities????), and the goings on of US tech start ups where most everyone speaks English and is active during the US timezones peak hours.