Articulating the ‘three-missions’ in Spanish universities

Preliminary versions of the manuscript were presented at the conference “XXI Jornadas de la Asociación de Economía de la Educación”, Porto (July, 2012), at the “5th European Conference on Intellectual Capital”, Bilbao (April, 2013) and “EU-SPRI Early Career Research Conference”, Lund (October, 2013).The present paper elaborates a critical reflection on the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model which conceptualizes universities as centres of excellence in education, research and third mission. It is argued that the shortcomings of this perspective are twofold: first, HEIs are treated as homogeneous institutions with equal capacity to perform and contribute to social engagement; and second, missions are undistinguishable from each other. Both features lead to mischaracterizations concerning the role of universities and their contribution to society. In the view proposed here missions are university strategies linked by complex relationship of compatibility, and the paper puts in perspective the persisting gap concerning the nature of and the relations across them.This research is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education through the Formación de Profesorado Universitario (F.P.U.) program.Peer Reviewe