HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOLIDARITY: A TURN OF THE EXTENSION FACING THE SOCIETY OF MERIT

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the role of higher education, especially regarding its new guidelines on extension, to build a more supportive and less competitive society. Firstly, based on the methodology of the reconstruction of social processes, stemming from a bibliographical analysis and the proposition of ideal types, it shows the origins and contemporary influence of the “University Mode 2” model proposed by the sociologist Michael Gibbons, emphasizing his adherence to individual anthropology and an appreciation of meritocracy. Then, the article presents a critique of this paradigm whilst rescuing a solidarity-based anthropology, to think about a higher education project capable of reducing the perverse effects of a competitive society. In this sense, based on the inductive method, I propose a reflection on the ways of accessing higher education and the role and potential of extension activities, particularly from Resolution n. 7, of 2018, which stipulated that such activities should make up at least 10% of the total curricular workload of undergraduate courses. The article concludes that it is possible to reread the thesis of historian Burton J. Bledstein to think of higher education as one of the main mechanisms for transforming society, not in the sense of forming a “culture of merit”, as diagnosed in the 20th century, but in the perspective of an appreciation of the “culture of solidarity”.