Abstract:

The history of University education has gone through several stages – from schools educating noblemen through higher schools professionalizing the best school graduates to universal schools ready to provide continuing professional education to every citizen of post-industrialized countries and the critical source of equalisation of chances and democratisation of society. Yet, in the recent decades the need to go beyond history and complacency has become particularly evident.
The functions of Universities have gradually developed through ages, with the core function changing from knowledge generators through knowledge disseminators to knowledge developers on the one hand, and from economy supporters through economy developers to economy boosters and strategic decision-makers.
According to Plymouth University, the University’s mission today is to ‘advance knowledge and transform lives through education and research’ [Plymouth University 2016]. This transformation is seen as positive and vitally important for the mankind’s fast development.
The European Universities’ current roles include those of knowledge generators, human capital developers, social and cultural developers of their regions, money earners, and major contributors to the development of local communities and beyond.

Today the University preserves its key role as a major contributor to the development of national societies. The contribution is manifold and multilevel, with the significance of the levels differing and changing from continent to continent and from country to country, with the four core contribution streamlines – economic, social, innovative / technological and cultural. And each streamline includes a number of components that when analysed are revealed as subsystems consisting of multiple elements and minor subsystems.
Thus, besides the most obvious ways in which Universities contribute to national economic development both as employers and purchasers of goods and services, they contribute to supranational economic development as innovators and economic incubators.
Besides Universities’ attracting and producing well-educated people and thus contributing to the cultural development of the local communities, they offer cultural amenities such as museums, theatres and extension courses for the city’s people and those of the surrounding area.
Besides Universities’ traditional function as providers of professional education, they have become political ideologists, strategy elaborators, and shapers of general public vision and opinions of the majority of European population.
We share Cardoso’s opinion that the society we live in is a society based on an informational development model, in which some cognitive skills are more valued than others, namely: the highest education level, formal literacy and technological literacies. The indicated skills and competencies are not innate – they are acquired in the process of education, be it formal, non-formal or informal education. As such, social division is not inevitable; there is, rather, a process of transition in which the protagonists are those who most easily master these skills or contribute more time and effort in self-development [Cardoso 2005].

The importance of Universities’ participation and contribution to societies’ development has been recently recognized more and more widely, with a number of Universities having developed a new term – that of ‘engaged Universities’, i.e. institutions of higher education that see engaging with the wider community as part and parcel of their mission.
The paper discusses the role of higher schools in the development of local communities and national societies and, within the European Union, their novel role of supranational and global developers. The conclusions can be used to improve Universities’ missions and strategies, as well as for further national and international research projects.

Keywords:

Universities’ traditional and novel functions, economic boosters, social changers, supranational and global developers.