Undergraduate programs are supposed to provide education. Postgraduate education, like masters and PhD programs are meant to conduct research, which is the discovery of new knowledge. The money extraction part is kind of a recent contrivance. It’s not that universities don’t perform any function – the first two are perfectly legitimate – it’s that the ones in the West went from absolutely world class to complete trash in my lifetime. It’s tragic, but it’s reality.
We’ll see if they ever recover.