University social responsibility in the opinion of students

Abstract

The evolution in the Polish Higher Education Institutions (HEI) sector has resulted in new tasks being set for them where, in addition to educational activity, their cooperation with other entities is assumed. One of the contemporary challenges which they are obliged to face is university social responsibility (USR), the popularity of which is growing. This fact was an important premise for undertaking research to assess the current state of the higher education sector in the context of the implementation of the concept of social responsibility. Given these facts, the purpose of the article is to show the significance of the issues and to identify students’ opinions on the implementation of the concept of social responsibility at Polish universities. Non-probability sampling was chosen, which is based on the researcher’s intuition, experience and knowledge - judgmental sampling. The survey involved 162 respondents who are students of Silesian universities. The research showed that most students admitted that social responsibility is a concept which they define only intuitively, and on average every seventh person surveyed did not know of this conceptual construct at all. Although in most cases the definition of the essence of the concept of social responsibility is correct,there is a presumption that the respondents did not take all determinants of USR into account in the assessment process.