Let's be careful about conflating the history of university curricula with the purpose of universities. The humanities are much older fields of study than the sciences, and younger still are the applied sciences and engineering. Universities in the 1600s had a mostly humanities focus because that was where the sum of human knowledge pointed us.
It depends on what you think the 'purpose of universities' is. To me, it's either preparing someone for further research in a field or to understand the human nature, so something more along the lines with what the history of university was. Universities should not be for vocational training -- that should either be trade school or on the job learning. But a lot of companies have realized they can outsource some stuff they used to teach on the job to universities, and students thus expect universities to cater towards that. It's a problem, imo.
