Socially Responsible University. Expectations And the Reality in Students’ Opinion as Guidelines To Refine the Social Responsibility Strategy

Developing socially responsible university’s good practices requires HEIs stakeholders’ identification and conscious relationships. Students constitute numerous, important stakeholders. The HEI’s basic activity is connected with them – education supported by science development and relationships with the surroundings, where students will find employment and HEI – opportunities to conduct research. Social responsibility principles realization requires HEI to identify students’ needs and expectations and include them in its activity; from students – active attitude and engagement. The study’s aim is identifying the gap between students’ expectations towards socially responsible university and perception of these activities. Knowing differences between expectations and perception enables modification and improvement of activities resulting from the university’s social responsibility strategy. On the other hand, as in one Polish HEI – Gdynia Maritime University (UMG) which lacks such a strategy, knowing the gap can come useful when designing activities in the social responsibility strategy. To this end, expectations and students’ perception towards Socially Responsible University were compared on the UMG example. The study is based on the analysis of the literature and questionnaire research results obtained in the Authors’ two research projects.