by Thomas Farnell

Community engagement has long occupied a curious position in higher education. Universities have been expected to contribute to society beyond teaching and research, and community engagement has existed in practice for decades. Yet it has often remained fragmented, unevenly recognised and peripheral to the policies and structures that shape what universities do.

Is this now changing? There are signs that it may be. In 2026, UNESCO became the first intergovernmental organisation to specifically name “community engagement” as one of the three missions of higher education, alongside research and teaching. At the same time, universities, European University alliances, networks and national initiatives are increasingly treating engagement not simply as a collection of activities, but as part of the core identity and mission of higher education.

An old idea, narrowed over time

Community engagement in higher education can be understood as how universities address societal needs in partnership with external communities, with “communities” encompassing public authorities, businesses, schools, civil society and citizens. The underlying idea is far from new. From their origins, universities have been fundamentally societal institutions, shaped by and responsive to external needs.

The emergence of the “third mission” in the late twentieth century reinforced the idea that universities contribute to society beyond teaching and research. However, over time, this broader societal role was increasingly subsumed under an economic narrative. The third mission came to be interpreted largely in terms of knowledge transfer, commercialisation and contribution to the knowledge economy. Economic and technological contributions took precedence over broader social and civic dimensions.

The issue, therefore, has never been the absence of engagement. Rather, community engagement has often existed without being clearly named, connected or supported as a coherent mission.

Europe’s “fourth mission”: promising, but weakly operationalised

For a period, European policy appeared to offer a possible way forward. In 2017, the European Commission referred to “civic universities” in its Renewed Agenda for Higher Education. In 2020, its vision for the European Education Area went further by introducing “service to society” as a fourth mission of higher education, complementing teaching, research and innovation and together forming a “knowledge square”.

In theory, this was promising. Distinguishing a mission focused on service to society from innovation could have created clearer space for universities’ broader social and civic role. The European Universities Initiative also seemed well placed to operationalise this ambition. Yet the results have been ambiguous. While reports on the activities on European university alliances show that community engagement initiatives are widespread across European University alliances, “service to society” has not acquired the weight one might expect from a genuine fourth mission. It is remains nested within broader agendas of innovation, society and economy, regional development or the green and digital transitions.

The problem, therefore, is not the absence of recognition of universities’ societal role, but the gap between broad mission-level ambition and narrower operationalisation.

Practice is beginning to move ahead of policy

On the ground, however, something more interesting is happening. Community engagement is not only expanding as an activity; in some cases it is being treated as a defining feature of university identity and as a strategic orientation that is acquiring institutional form.

Three European University alliances illustrate this broader move:

• The EMERGE alliance offers perhaps the most explicit conceptual repositioning: rather than treating societal engagement as a consequence of teaching and research, it describes it as its “first mission”.
• The EUNICoast alliance is embedding community engagement as an area of institutional development requiring evidence, reflection, planning and follow-up, including institutional reporting and action plans for all member institutions.
• The YUFE alliance, meanwhile, positions community engagement as a transversal principle integrated across the alliance’s activities through its Community Engagement Declaration 2025–2030.

In these cases, community engagement is moving from something universities do towards something that helps define what universities are.

A recognisable field is emerging

These developments are supported by a wider transnational movement. Community engagement is increasingly acquiring the features of a recognisable field: shared concepts, methods, tools, platforms, networks, institutional examples and policy advocates. The TEFCE Toolbox provided one of the first structured European frameworks for institutional self-reflection on community engagement. Since then, further resources for action planning, university-community partnerships and community-engaged curricula have been developed and gathered through the platform www.community-engagement.eu. European networks support service-learning and community-based research, while bodies such as the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities and the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education connect this agenda globally.

National and regional developments point in a similar direction, although unevenly. Flanders and Catalonia have substantial engagement activity but still fragmented policy frameworks. Ireland has gone further in recognising engagement alongside teaching and research and developing national support infrastructure for engagement. In the United Kingdom, the recent civic university agenda has provided new impetus for universities and communities to define shared place-based commitments.

So “practice ahead of policy” is important, but incomplete. In some systems, policy is beginning to catch up.

The time is now

If ever there was a time for universities to demonstrate their capacity to work proactively with communities in addressing complex societal challenges, it is now. And many universities are already acting. The challenge for policy is no longer simply to encourage isolated examples of good practice. It is to recognise and support the emerging infrastructure through which community engagement can become a coherent and sustainable mission of higher education.

Ultimately, the challenge is not to introduce something entirely new, but to name, define, connect and strengthen what already exists. Whether community engagement is called a third, fourth or even first mission matters less than whether it is recognised as a core mission and supported accordingly. Universities are moving. Policy now needs to catch up.

This blog is adapted from the author’s article in Policy Reviews in Higher Education: Farnell, T (2026) Community engagement in higher education: from fragmented practice to core mission?

Thomas Farnell is a Senior Education Policy Expert at the Institute for the Development of Education, an NGO based in Zagreb, Croatia. He has led a series of transnational European projects involving universities, local authorities and NGOs to enhance community engagement in higher education. Email: tfarnell@iro.hr