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Topic 1. Overview


University social responsibility requires an open and participative university model which must be reflected in learning methodologies as well as in the willingness to serve social needs. This responsibility implies open access to and creates the conditions for a space which is neither selective nor hierarchical in relation to their areas of expertise.


The final Communiqué of the World Conference on Higher Education (WCHE) hosted by UNESCO in Paris in July 2009 states that:
“In the past ten years, tremendous efforts have been made to improve access and ensure equity. This effort must continue. Access alone is, however, not enough. Much more needs to be done. Efforts must be made to ensure the success of learners. 

Expanding access has become a priority in the majority of Member States and increasing participation rates in higher education are a major global trend. Nevertheless, great disparities persist, constituting a major source of inequality. Governments and institutions must encourage women’s access, participation and success at all levels of education. 

In expanding access, higher education must pursue the goals of equity, relevance and quality simultaneously. Equity is not simply a matter of access – the objective must be successful participation and completion while at the same time assuring student welfare. This must include appropriate financial and educational support to those from poor and marginalized communities…

Member States, working in collaboration with all stakeholders, should develop policies and strategies at system and institutional levels to:

· Guarantee equal access to underrepresented groups such as workers, the poor, minorities, the differently abled, migrants, refugees and other vulnerable populations;
· Pursue the goals of equity, quality and success by developing more flexible entry pathways and assuring better recognition of prior learning and work experience.”

The priority of higher education institutions should be to make existing knowledge available and to generate knowledge that can be used in the construction of a new model of civilization. This can only be done through interactive collaboration with society as a whole.

As a consequence of massive higher education expansion, new challenges have appeared: the inability of the state to finance this expansion, the emergence and pressure of the market, the internationalization and cross-border provision and the importance of accreditation for quality.
Those challenges and their responses are interconnected. The link between them is related to what we understand a b quality and what we consider must be a learning priority for our times. It means that what we understand as common good in a globalized era or what we understand by wellbeing and prosperity.

At a time of global challenges, universities must learn how to combine human as well as social development issues at local and global levels. Neither the model of specialized elite nor the market-oriented universities are appropriate for our contemporary world, rather a real knowledge community involved with the process of social transformations.

A waste framework to define the interchange of value between universities and society is needed, in which an identifying trend must overcome specialization and fragmentation through a whole and interconnected vision of knowledge as a common good.

This requires ensuring equal access to higher education as well as gender balanced participation and direct, fluid communication between the institutions and different social collectives.

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