Abstract:

Through last decades, Universities have been foisted with several demands that exceed academic and educational, and that transcend to society itself. Aiming to actors of the universities to be called to have an active role in society of constant relationship with the environment that surrounds it, that is, universities are saddled with large part of national issues and is expected to give effective and concrete solutions to them. It is in this sense, how Social Projection Programs are created and university social responsibility takes relevance in recent years; to account for these demands, and give answers to these requirements.

The concept of Social Responsibility for universities in Colombia and for the analysis of this project will also result quit problematic. Because, when referring to responsibility a series of competences is generated, practical imperatives that seems to have a north in the statement but in reality it fades; who is ultimately liable for University Social Responsibility, students, teachers, administrative staff, institution as a legal form, or all of the above?

These programs that are investigated may be dissimilar in terms of impacts, products, resources, etc. According to empiric experience, Social Projection in every university responds to ideals and particular theoretical and methodological frameworks. That is why they turn into interesting spaces for research since there is very little of scientific track done over them. Also, it might be thought that their practices respond in many cases to interests that exceed ideals of Social Responsibility raised, and look for particular interests that may go beyond not only methodologies and frameworks of Social Projection proposed in institutions but transcend the institution to demonstrate explicit and implicit interference of external policies to university itself.

For comparison and inquiry over practices in social projection of two private universities in Bogota that was pretended with this research, it is proposed that methodologically the best bet is related to a mix research model that in words of Tashakkori and Teddie (2003) create a third force inside research paradigms, since there is a better understanding of the subject of study from the combination of paradigms. Likewise, Moscoloni (2005) refers the importance of triangulation that these kinds of methodologies bring for investigation and knowledge development, because it provides solidity and robustness to researches.

In this way, the research based its efforts on three phases: An initial inquiry as a documentary gathering of the Social Projection Programs of the three Universities, from some documentary retention formats (3 Formats, one per each University with around 60 documents checked); then, it was performed an information gathering from the stakeholders of each institution, through surveys (530) that pretended to examine for ideas, knowledge, perceptions and references about the Social Projection Programs. Lastly, there were held interviews (15) to management and people of interest in charge of Social Projection Programs and University Social Responsibility in each institution.

These three phases were mainstreamed from observations and field diaries of researches.

Keywords:

Social Projection, Society And University, Higher Education.