GUNI > Consulting Good Practices
Consulting Good Practices
Here you will find experiences concerning Higher Education and social commitment all over the world, according to the criteria and priorities defined by the Universities and Social Commitment Observatory.
| Concept definition |
| Sustainable Development |
| Higher education institutions have promoted highly diverse initiatives in the field of sustainable development, particularly in the greening of campus management, the transversal inclusion of sustainability in the curriculum and the development of research programmes linked to sustainability. |
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| Values, Ethics and Educating Citizens |
| This is an area closely related to university teaching. It covers initiatives that include in the study plan objectives such as training socially responsible professionals, education in values, and training citizens to be critical and responsible. Also in the area of university management are projects such as drawing up codes of ethics and social balance sheets of the institution. |
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| University Access and Equality |
| Programmes and initiatives that favour equality in access to higher education, i.e. that promote access for social groups excluded from higher education. The initiatives implemented include positive discrimination policies, scholarship programmes based on prioritisation criteria, policies that promote completion of studies by groups with a high drop-out risk, etc. |
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| Support for Social Services and Social Guarantee Systems |
| This refers to the promotion and support by higher education of public social service systems (public healthcare, basic education, etc.) and social guarantee systems (transfers from the welfare state, etc.). These include research and university extension programmes and projects that use higher education to promote or encourage the expansion of social services and the improvement of quality assurance services, particularly basic education, health and housing services, etc. |
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| Cooperation in Community and Local Development |
| This is the contextualisation of higher-education activities to meet the requirements of the immediate social environment. It therefore reflects the need to create a connection between higher education and the needs and demands of the social environment. This particularly includes initiatives that seek to intervene in the environment, either through community-based research programmes, student volunteers or university extension programmes. |
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| Support for Civil Society Associations |
| This specifically includes the promotion and reinforcement of civil society organizations and associations with the aim of consolidating and reinforcing democratic and participatory values that encourage public action, and the improvement of mechanisms for democratic participation. Some of the initiatives that can use higher education to contribute in this area include education and training of members of civil-society organisations, support for building networks and synergies between institutions, and improving the public presence of these institutions. |
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| Institutional Models |
| University experiences that not only develop social-commitment initiatives and experiences, but also design their institutional models based on ethical criteria, community ties or a reformulation of the knowledge generation and transfer model. Such universities put greater emphasis on their institutional role of linking higher education with the social, political and economic context in which they operate. Social commitment forms a constituent part of these institutions. |
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