Universities, as Western cultural institutions, can look back on a long development spanning several centuries. In terms of cultural significance, this puts them into the same league as the church, the state or major banks, to mention but a few. In our modern world of increased globalization and digitalization, universities are tasked with educating an ever-growing number of students. Inadvertently, this also leads to an inflation of the value of academic degrees, let alone to mention the actual quality of the skills that are being taught to students. This presentation looks into the emergent discourse around research impact that is increasingly used to justify the raison d'être of modern universities. Departing primarily from research conducted within the UK, we contend that reducing the role of the university to that of mere accreditation and skills acquisition for its students, in combination with a push for beneficial research impacts for its teachers/researchers is detrimental to the respect for the university as an institution. Not only are universities running the risk of underappreciating what they do, but they are also fueling a greater division of society in which the citizenry is trained to use highly sophisticated conceptual tools without being provided the complex understanding needed to wield it competently. Within our analysis, we employ the concept of maculate reflexivity to explain why such a dynamic is occurring. We understand maculate reflexivity as the presence of reflexivity in the pursuit around extrinsic motivations reinforced by society in relation to contemporary social and environmental goals. However, this happens without due self-examination of what such conduct will mean in the long run as the external value hierarchy of society rewards it in terms of student numbers, research funds, and prestige. Inadvertently, such development ossifies contemporary values in the long term. We argue that the society-wide increase of polarization and populism is fueled by such a dynamic, and will increase unless the universities actively acknowledge and embrace their role as shapers and stewards of Western culture.