Internationally, questions about the perceived utility of university mathematics for teaching school mathematics pose an ongoing challenge for secondary mathematics teacher education. This special issue is dedicated to exploring this topic and related issues in the preparation of secondary mathematics teachers--by which we mean teachers of students with ages, approximately, of 12-18 years. This article introduces this theme and provides a semi-systematic survey of recent related literature, which we use to elaborate and situate important theoretical distinctions around the problems, challenges, and solutions of university mathematics in relation to teacher education. As part of the special issue, we have gathered articles from different countries that elaborate theoretical and empirical approaches, which, collectively, describe different ways to strengthen university mathematics with respect to the aims of secondary teacher education. This survey paper serves to lay out the theoretical groundwork for the collection of articles in the issue.