EU grant awarded to embed studies of the social economy into higher education

Researchers at York St John University believe there is a need for Higher Education to respond to the economic crisis by teaching people-centred ways of managing economic life, such as social entrepreneurship and co-operativism.

A grant for €335,000 has been awarded to York St John University to lead a three-year international project that aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the social economy and to promote this within Higher Education curricula.

The economic downturn of 2008 – and its continuing effects – raises serious questions about how Higher Education in Europe can address this challenge in its teaching and learning.

Margaret Meredith, senior lecturer at York St John University and one of the project co-ordinators, said, “People are now questioning the values implicit in a system which seeks profit at all costs. Higher Education needs to equip students with a broader vision and the tools to analyse a variety of ways in which the economy might work more effectively and for the common good and creation of sustainable wealth. We believe that the social economy warrants higher exposure in our universities and should be studied alongside other economic models.”

The Social Economy project was awarded a grant from the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus programme, with co-funding from a Latin American university. The project was one of only six successful bids from 70 applications. The report from Erasmus Mundus on the team’s bid said that it “leaves no doubt that there is a need for a greater role of social economy and social capital within economy education in Europe and elsewhere.”

York St John University will co-ordinate the Social Economy project working with partners from across the globe: The University of San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Peru is at the heart of a network of universities across Latin America and is co-funding the project; The Centre for African Studies at the University of Oporto, similarly has many contacts across Africa; and Mondragon University in Spain is a leader in the study and practice of the co-operative movement in Spain. The project will also involve many associate universities across all continents.

One of the main project activities is to conduct a comprehensive survey, to be launched in May 2013 and open to all those working in the social economy worldwide. The findings will then inform a reference handbook, which will advise on European HE curriculum design. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations have expressed their support for the project.