Abstract:

University in the XXI century is in a change process and constant challenges. Society and state increasingly demand a more significant role from universities over several spaces of social, cultural, economic and politic life. On one side, university has been called for a higher impact in several spaces of the building of national states; on the other hand, university has been required to a bigger participation in the challenges of a globalized world.

For this reason, in the last decades universities have conceived into their programmatic objectives specialized spaces to account for these demands and particularities that have been called in different ways: social projection, university social responsibility, third mission of university, university extension, etc., each one with accuracies and own approaches that have allowed a wide range of analysis making the reflections more complex.

Under this umbrella, in 2019 is executed a research funded by Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios which main objective was to deliberating from the characterization of three programs of private universities in Bogotá city about the theoretical and practical aspects that are being carried in each program.

The methodology used in that project was the mixed method of data gathering where, according to Bericat parameters (1998), the method are used in a triangulation way and both methodologies are executed to approach the same aspect of reality: Social Projection Programs of Three Private Universities in the City of Bogotá. In this way, the independence in applying the methods was sought, interviews and documental retention formats from a qualitative optical and surveys from a quantitative one, which substantiated the research.

Based on the above, this paper will try to be a synthesis of the main outcomes of that research especially about the perception and satisfaction of those programs in educational communities; this will give light in several ways. On the one hand, they determine the functionality of those programs in the inside and outside of the educational institutions; on the other hand, to deliberate about the scope and even further about the limitations of these spaces towards the impact of university in society.

Keywords:

The Third Mission of University, Society, University.