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Universities’ Social Responsibility – Mobilizing Students for the Democratization of Knowledge in Society
Besides teaching and research, universities should endorse commitment to sustainability, not only in environmental and economic terms, but also in social terms, so that sustainable development is a reality for all the citizens. To achieve sustainable social development, universities can mobilize their students, to improve the level of knowledge of the local communities. This paper will focus on one practice that furthers universities’ social responsibility: mobilizing universities' students in mentoring activities towards disadvantaged youth and integrating youth service in the curriculum.
Relative to family income, France is the third highest spender on children in the OECD after Hungary and Luxemburg, but educational outcomes are distributed very unequally. France has the fifth highest gap between low and high achievers. This inequality may help explain the low rates of children reporting liking school. Only around one in five French children report liking school, 6% below the OECD average. According to a survey carried out among youth mentored by Afev students, more than a third report going sometimes or often to school with a stomachache. Furthermore, according to some researchers, such as the sociologist Marie Duru Bellat, degrees have a too strong impact on individuals life in term of professional and social integration. This contributes to increase pressure on youth, as a failure at school would cost very much. As a result, French youth show particularly low confidence in their future.
Give youth the possibility to learn and develop through active participation: we believe that participation in non-formal education programs create specific skills that are highly valuable among employers and enrich the academic and formal education experience.
Foster active citizenship among youth.
AFEV is a non-governmental organization that has been developing actions mainly in France since 1991, though it had its first international experience with the implementation of projects in Barcelona, Spain. It mobilizes student volunteers in mentoring activities towards disadvantaged youth who face difficulties at school. Mentors meets their mentees two hours a week on a face to face basis, preferably at the mentees’ homes. An external survey was carried out in 2008 to measure the social impact of AFEV programs.
The main results on youth are the following:
Better ranking according to their teachers and families
Impact on attitudes and behavior in class: increased class participation and attention, better relationships with teachers
Increased mobility
This study also shows that AFEV actions have an impact on parents, who feel more confortable helping their children with their homework. Through their experience, students learn skills that enrich the academic and formal experience and thus should be recognized in universities' curricula and also by employers. AFEV cooperates with universities and the national representative body called the “Conférence des présidents d'université” so that social volunteering can be recognized in higher education curriculum. AFEV started to develop partnerships with universities in 1995 and as of 2010, 40 universities out of 85 recognize and value volunteering in their curricula. This has been fostered by the Bologna Process and the implementation of the LMD sytem and more recently, the “LRU- loi relative aux libertés et responsabilités des universités” law that granted some autonomy to universities and created a third mission: facilitating students’ professional integration besides two traditional missions, training and research. This means, for example, that universities are due to publish outcomes regarding their students’ professional integration. Most universities attribute ECTS credits (three to five) to students involved in mentoring activities for one year, two hours a week. Students are requested to follow specific training organized by AFEV and the university. At the end of the year, they provide a report on experience and present it to a university jury. Around 18% of AFEV volunteers benefit from such a recognition. Nevertheless, this type of recognition had limits in itself : it concentrates on the recognition of the non formal experience, but the academic ties remained unclear and the skills gained thanks to the non formal experience are unsufficiently taken into account. In order to achieve a deeper integration of service projects in the curricula, Afev experiments a form of recognition not only based on social commitment but based on the skills that can be gained thanks to participation in social volunteering. This three years projet is run in partnership with four universities (Albi, Cergy, Nantes, Lyon 1) und with the support of the “Fonds d’expérimentation pour la jeunesse” launched by the former Ministry for youth, Martin Hirsch.
In November 2009, a note published by the ministry for higher education revealed that some of the small and recently created universities were doing much better in terms of student achievement in the Bachelor's Degree than some of the well known and big universities: for instance the university of Albi in the region Midi-Pyrénées in the South West of France (created in 1991). This university strongly supports active student participation – 10% of its students are volunteers with AFEV - because it considers active participation to be a key to academic success.
The program for the recognition of skills gained thanks to volunteering is still in progress and has gained interest from many universities.
National authorities now further HEIs to take into account youth volunteering in the curricula.
This practice is innovative on different levels:
In a first step, a largely external process : it has enabled universities to understand and recognize the value of non-formal experience, though universities are not involved much in the projects' implementation.
In a second step, an internal process leading to curricula innovation: some universities have begun to integrate youth service in the curricula. The projects are drawn jointly by universities and AFEV.
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