The article explores historical issues concerning the relationships between higher education and institutions and their local and regional communities. The primary focus is on the ways in which institutions are influenced by social change and have partnership roles in economic and social development. Their role from the nineteenth century and in the present, however, has been one of responsiveness rather than one of explicitly pursuing social change. This "long story" of the universities concentrates mainly on some nineteenth-century features and the complex pattern of institutions with different traditions in the twentieth century. It discusses institutional histories and the sources of developments around the turn of the twenty-first century. The central argument points to the lack of historical analysis of the declared and tacit roles of higher education institutions with regard to society and social change. (Contains 47 footnotes.)