University and Society

Universities play a crucial role in society. Traditionally, universities were very formal centers for higher level of teaching and learning, but, nowadays, knowledge creation, dissemination and challenging in a rather intellectual sense is a serious function expected from a modern university.

Training the young people to get ready for professional presence in the society via creating skillful, insightful, and, eventually impactful social role players is the key function the society expects from the higher education institutions to do.?? Competition for the employment opportunities and professional social participation is becoming harder and harder in society since the marketplace anticipates more and more competent graduates from the universities.

In turn, society, as the route and origin of the university, provides the different types of resources needed by the university to survive and to continue its diverse services such as education, research, and more recently, entrepreneurship.

Considering the ever-changing nature of the needs for the educated human resources, the universities have been faced serious challenges, mainly including:

Increasing demands for different kinds of resources, mainly financial supports and up-to-date, motivated, and efficient mentors/trainers;

A serious need for well-developed intra- as well as inter-institutional networking and collaboration;

An urgent need for the capability to present its capacities and applicability for the rest of society;

The ability to find efficient ways to connect the science/technology atmospheres to the business development scenarios;

Adopting the big paradigm shifts occurred in education in the way to train agile, learning, and cooperative graduates.

Universities, in fact, are parts of the communities which surround and sustain them, including different local as well as national structures and strategic plans and, therefore, have to find ways to show or prove that they are excellent at partnering with society.

Overall, universities have to be committed to the missions, challenges, and concerns of their mother society. They should take the responsibility to be actively involved in social dilemmas and issues via the development and application of the ‘beneficial knowledge’ for the sake of the society welfare. ??As advocates of the sustainable development, universities help ‘set the agenda’ for the future and do their best to implement it and to have a developed society in all aspects.

Sustainable development is a critical issue for universities and the whole society. To establish a consistent relationship between universities and society, here are some suggestions:

Reshape the university: universities must reorient all their components towards sustainability via taking part in national/regional/global transformative initiatives.

Change the management modalities: the conventional management strategies and approaches do not work for the new generation of the universities. They should be managed as business units rather than the traditional academic solid science-based structures.

Listen to the voice of society: a modern university should be in close and continuous contact, discourse, and communication with the society in order to sense the changes, to trace the weak signals, and to receive the preventive alarms of any adverse social actions or reactions.

Establish functional networks with other role players: an agile institution should be able to use the capabilities of other actors of the development scenarios, even the competitors, to make opportunities from the threads and to cooperate instead of wasting the energy and resources for the unnecessary confrontations.

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