THE IDEA OF UNIVERSITY FROM A HUMANIST APPROACH: THE CONTRIBUTION OF SERVICE-LEARNING AS A PHILOSOPHY OF HIGHER EDUCATION

This paper is part of a new line of academic work that reflects on the idea of the university and the development of higher education from a philosophical-educational approach. Our starting hypothesis is that the identity crisis that the university is going through is not negative. On the contrary, it is forcing the academic community to elaborate and propose responses that are revitalizing the very notion of higher education from a humanistic approach. In this context we propose service-learning as a practical and normative philosophical-educational approach, and thus as an "ethical theory of human formation", which helps to respond to the questions and challenges of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). To this end, and following a methodology of critical-hermeneutic enquiry, we examine the construction of the EHEA through its constituent documents, while at the same time delving into and contrasting with the idea of university that is being demanded. This first movement, in which we try to establish a balance between more vocational and more liberal positions, will allow us to construct and analyse the theoretical consistency of the main contributions that service-learning (SL), as a philosophy of higher education, can make to the university and to the processes of development of the EHEA. We have grouped these theoretical consistencies into three contributions: service as a value in higher education; SL as an approach that aligns the classic pillars of the University and, finally, this methodology as a virtual proposal that helps us to reflect on the meaning of digital technologies in higher education.