The early universities outside of Europe where mostly vocational training for the clergy. And the first big expansion of US based public universities was with the land grant system, which explicitly focused on ag an engineering type programs - still often a strong suit of these universities today.
That's why those programs are some of the exceptions in being good at job prep, but rates of college attendance remained very low for another 80+ years until after WW2, so the elite who could afford to study whatever still made up a big chunk of most schools' income. As college attendance rates went higher and higher the job preparation need became the primary one the school is serving, which changed the economics in a way that simply having a few job preparation programs didn't.
