Enriching higher education training through values and social engagement

The present study starts describing the relevance of university mission statements and how they have been interacting with the social demands throughout the history of higher education. This way, the recent development of a knowledge economy has strongly impacted universities that look for ways to produce and commercialize ideas (second and third missions). The increasing accreditation agencies and regional and international rankings have helped to reinforce these processes. This trend has created a situation where isomorphic mechanisms are pressing universities to align themselves with models that do not always fit a wide spectrum of them. In addition, this chapter underlines the excessive emphasis on faculty research productivity in detriment of ethic and values training that is key to have a successful professional development and an effective and well-adjusted implementation of any project. A final section discusses possible scenarios with alternative tools for administrators, who want to enrich the actual state of their universities.