(SBMC Comics/Zach Weinersmith)
My undergraduate school spent a lot of money on bringing high-profile speakers to campus. I've never understood why. If the speaker had something useful to say, we could just read it in a book that s/he had written. And a book can be easily reread, whereas a speech cannot easily be reheard.
Alas, as far as I could tell, my opinion was a minority one.