Social responsibility in higher agricultural education: The future research approach

In the future, the issue of university social responsibility (USR) will be expanded to a variety of domains of local, national and international communities. Since the social responsibility of higher education in the future transformation process requires a futuristic approach, the current study aims to focus on the same in higher agricultural education. Three main steps were taken in the course of this study. First, based on the focus group approach, drivers of university social responsibility in higher agricultural education were identified. Then, using the interactive analysis method as well as MicMac software, five key drivers were selected from among the 14 identified divers.  Key factors were defined with expert opinions based on the idea of scenario writing on 21 possible and probable situations in the future of university social responsibility. And then by forming 21x21 matrix and applying expert knowledge in assessing the impact of each situation on the occurrence or non-occurrence of other situation, 2 contrasting scenarios (Phoenix and Peacock) as strong ones and 104 scenarios with low and weak probably occurrences were extracted using ScenarioWizard 4.31 software. The phoenix scenario represents the realization of university social responsibility for sustainable local and regional development whereas the peacock scenario stresses that the university as a separate entity lacks social responsibility. In other words, these scenarios indicate the futuristic vision of the university’s social responsibility.