CSR and Turkish Universities in ARWU 2018: An Evaluation of the Strategic Plans and Performance Reports

Analyzing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of universities is possible through examining their strategic plans that are policy documents making institutional commitments visible. The universities’ strategic plans mainly provide information on education, R&D, and community service policies that are the main responsibility areas of universities. Among these responsibilities, a particular focus is given by this study on social responsibility policies and plans of universities and their position in the global university rankings. Global university rankings, however, solely take academic activities into consideration while ignoring CSR activities. In this context, the study questions the CSR policies and performances of the universities. Twelve universities from Turkey are examined that were included in the 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Content analysis is applied to investigate the strategic plans of these universities in order to trace their CSR policy. To understand the CSR performance of universities, the Council of Higher Education’s (CoHE) university reports were used. Finally, the study ranks the universities CSR performances by using ARWU’s ranking method. Results show that, when academic and CSR performance of universities are compared, the rankings of eleven universities out of twelve alter. Findings show that University Social Responsibility (USR) can be applied to strengthen the image of universities and could be used as part of university rankings as a criteria when evaluating a university’s performance.