Human-Centered Transformation: Rethinking the Role of the University through a Third Mission

What does it mean to be a university in the face of a crisis of meaning, accelerated digitalization, and rising societal expectations? This question formed the key frame of discussion at the international conference "Ethics, Aesthetics, and Challenges of Higher Education," held March 19–21 on the HSE St. Petersburg campus.

The central intellectual agenda was dominated by a presentation by Magdalena Gaete, head of the Laboratory for Reputation Management in Education, entitled "Human-Centered Transformation: The Role of the Third Mission in Fifth-Generation Universities." In her presentation, she proposed a conceptual rethinking of the contemporary university model.
Unlike previous generations of universities focused on knowledge production (University 1.0–2.0) or innovation and economic impact (University 3.0–4.0), the fifth-generation university (5GU) model is based on a human-centered approach. In this logic, the university acts not only as a participant in innovation ecosystems but as an institutional platform focused on individual development and the creation of social value.

In this context, the university's third mission is reimagined not as an additional function or set of external activities, but as a value-based and normative core that defines the university's interactions with society. This approach overcomes the reduction of the third mission to knowledge commercialization and shifts the focus toward the co-creation of social value within the framework of sustainable development, the ESG agenda, and innovation ecosystem models (in particular, the Quintuple Helix model).
Service-learning is the key operational mechanism for implementing this model. This approach integrates the educational process, research, and social impact, developing students' ability to address real-world societal challenges.

The practical dimension of this approach was presented in Yuri Kabanov's paper, "Projects that Make an Impact: Integrating Applied Projects and Service-Learning into the Political Science Curriculum." He demonstrated how student engagement in solving real-world community problems within the educational process simultaneously contributes to the development of their professional competencies and the creation of measurable social impact.

Despite the conference's broad thematic range—from humanities research to the application of generative artificial intelligence in education—a common thread emerged during the discussions: the need to rethink the university not only from a technological or organizational perspective, but above all from its anthropological foundations and social responsibility.
Thus, the conference became not only a platform for academic exchange but also a space for strategic reflection on the future of higher education, in which human-centered transformation and strengthening the university's social mission are becoming key areas of institutional development.