So I'm almost finished up the College questlines and I'm surprised this hasn't come up in my quests.

What really did happen during the great collapse? Who initiated it? Why was the college saved?

I feel the answer should be obvious. But I'm on my way to labryinthian now. Is the answer revealed yet? It's bugging me!

If I remember correctly, you are never given a clear explanation to what caused the great collapse.

Really? That totally svcks! I'm so damn curioous. I refuse to believe it was a natural disaster and major luck.

it may have something to do with the eruption of red mountain in Morrowind

Well yeah that's what Avros told me but that's pure rumor. Still doesn't explain why the college was left fully intact.

Another thing (that is related to the mages, or the people think is) left unexplained...I'm still hoping that maybe we'll get a DLC to settle a lot of the things left in the air related to the College. But this is something that probably has farther reaching consequences, and will probably never be expanded. Oh well...I'm still hoping. I would love to have some quests to redeem the mages, or change a little bit how the people regard them.
I still love the game.

What I thought they could do with the Great Collapse was make some cool scenery. Under the College of Winterhold in the little inlet area they should have put rubble and destroyed houses. It would have been very cool and might have involved some quests, involving ghosts, family heirlooms(probably everyone in the whole of Skyrim has a missing family heirloom) and other things. To me it just didn't seem logical that the all the wreckage of the city would be swept away, I mean the bay is like 7 feet deep. Those are just my thoughts on the matter.

The Great Collapse was apparently caused when a series of massive storms hit the coastline and eroded away the rock and flooded the area under the college, which caused most of the city to crumble away into the sea.

The College was saved by magic, but who or what caused this magic to save the college is unknown. It's a shame that Winterhold was destroyed as it was such a large, rich, and influential city before that happened - now it's a bunch of houses in the snow and a building that is shunned and feared by the population of Skyrim.

I hope there is a DLC to rebuild Winterhold. Possibly all the mages could work together to make the land rise up again.

There are some vague references ingame and the storms werent the only part of it, there was the supsicion red mountain weakened it etc and it doesnt take long to realise the college constantly has students doing silly stuff. The gauntlet downstairs lost 4 students, the summoning forge is again a rule breaker, phintias has lost 4 students and you can find their corpses.

I think bethesda either wants it to never be fully known by the player or is saving the rest of the info for later.