ABSTRACT
This research project examines an enduring and also changing dimension of higher education-its civic engagement and social responsibility goals and activities-in a wide range of geographic settings. Though we have identifi ed the historical foundations for engagement and global drivers that are moving universities to embrace (or rediscover) more engaged models of teaching and research, it is critical to explore the experience of different kinds of higher education institutions in very different contexts and in all parts of the world. Our study examines the extent to which the founding missions of these institutions shape their current civic and social responsibility activities, and we analyze how a series of other driving forces-both reinforcing and constraining-determine the approaches and experiences of individual institutions. Alternative conceptions of capital formation are a guiding framework for this analysis, with an emphasis on the interplay between human capital formation and social capital formation. We refl ect on how these diverse examples illustrate alternative higher education narratives-liberal theory, professional formation theory and the university as research engine. The research includes examples that represent the full spectrum of phases in the relationship between universities and communities: specialist communities, national and regional institutions serving post-industrial society, public systems of higher education, curriculum and institutional innovation, blurred boundaries and the dual sector, and the for-profi t sector.
