Odpowiedzialność szkolnictwa wyższego za budowanie odporności społecznej – ramy strategiczne in statu nascendi
The Responsibility of the State and Universities for Building Social Resilience: Strategic Actions in the Making

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses the problem of the responsibility of the higher education system for building social resilience under the conditions of contemporary polycrisis, understood not as a simple accumulation of multiple crises, but as their mutual entanglement and the intensification of their effects. The point of departure is the assumption that – in the face of escalating geopolitical, climatic, technological, social, and psychological challenges – higher education should be viewed not only as a sector of teaching and research, but also as an important element of social infrastructure, co-responsible for strengthening the adaptive capacities of academic communities and the wider social environment. The aim of the article is to identify those premises of strategic thinking in higher education policy and in university policies in Poland that directly or indirectly point to the need to build social resilience. The analysis is based on selected European Union documents and on the draft Strategy for the Development of Higher Education in Poland until 2035 together with its annexes, treated as manifestations of institutional discourse that co-shapes the framework for future public and university-level action. The analysis shows that while at the ideological level, these documents reflect a crisis-oriented perspective and employ the language of flexibility, security and adaptation, at the operational level, the dominant category is that of the social responsibility of universities, which frames rather than explicitly develops thinking about social resilience. As a result, the article leads to the conclusion that building social resilience does not yet constitute a clearly distinguished and coherent strategic direction in Polish higher education, although it should become a permanent element of universities’ social responsibility and their third mission.

• Details
• Contents