Unpacking the Social Dimension of Universities

Abstract

Emphasis on the ‘social dimension’ of higher education in Europe has featured prominently in successive communiqués following the regular ministerial meetings in the Bologna process, although this high-level policy commitment to widening participation and social inclusion has not always been followed up by significant concrete actions. Nevertheless, this emphasis on the ‘social dimension’ continues to be seen as one of the characteristics used to distinguish European universities from universities in more marketised higher education systems, such as the United States. There has been a reluctance to unpack on detail what it means, except perhaps as an implicit assumption that free, or low, tuition is a precondition of widening the social base of universities. In a wider sense the label ‘the social dimensions’ also suggests a contrast to the economic contribution that universities make, in regional development and science-led innovation, although disentangling the social and economic dimensions of modern higher education systems is a difficult task. There is a number of aspects of the ‘social dimension’ – including the role universities play in preserving and developing cultural values (largely through the humanities), their direct interventions in the development of policy and more broadly social change (through the social sciences), their political, and moral, responsibilities to widen access to underrepresented social groups and their key place in civil society (and the open society).