Characterization of the Social Projection Policy of the Catholic University of Córdoba (UCC) to evaluate the educational impact

Abstract

The Catholic University of Córdoba (Argentina) has implemented a social projection policy since 2011, which is part of a central objective at the institutional level: to conceive the substantive and central functions of the university from socially responsible management. The search for this objective is supported by the Ignatian educational paradigm, which seeks to influence the training of future graduates from there. Faced with this, an investigation is proposed that seeks to investigate the impact that the policy of social projection, under the approach of University Social Responsibility, adopted by the Catholic University of Córdoba achieves in the training of graduates. An essential stage of this research is to characterise the aforementioned policy in order to correlate the educational processes according to the educational paradigm adopted at the university with respect to the training and profile of its graduates. This characterisation was carried out from an interpretive, retrospective and cross-sectional analytical approach, developed through a qualitative methodological design, based on documentary analysis and indepth interviews with institutional referents. The results of the characterisation of the PPS allowed considering two categories of analysis: on the one hand, the link between the University and the community according to pre-established properties, and on the other, the impact of the policy on future graduates according to the adopted educational paradigm. Given the lack of adequate tools for evaluating the training impact on the profiles of university graduates, this research aims to contribute with useful instrumental advances in measuring the effectiveness of the social projection policy of the Catholic University of Córdoba, which have the potential to be extended for employment in other universities entrusted to the Society of Jesus, and in the region.