What Academia Do?

With The question of the need for educational system is divided into two sectors, lower and upper with very different roles. Considering these sectors and their roles in social stability where the necessity of lower sector becomes depending on the quality of education.

The upper sector such as colleges and universities, however, remains questionable as what exactly do they do? What is the value of their production to the nation supporting their studies? What the education enables them to do or produce in the form of ‘educated people’?
As the length of education increases further into postgraduate and higher then, the value of their time moves into more critical levels of life and family. How can research skills generate any returns to their nations?
Now, with the continuously expanding internet as the infrastructure of our global village these unanswered questions on the role of academies and universities should be raised for their direct impacts at various levels.

Immediate questions:
Why do we need traditional academies?
What do they really do?
What are their contributions at local national and global levels?
What is their cost to local, national and global societies?
Are there any better, alternative or improved ways to make them more efficient and more transparent?