This paper discusses the Brazilian university social responsibility, that became compulsory as an institutional dimension in 2004 according to Sinaes law. It brings to Brazilian universities the challenge of thinking their responsibility and of questioning if the people they are graduating develop the capacity of reflection, critical thinking and willingness to offer answers to the global crisis and face social and economic injustices. Neverthless, the social responsibility legal framework rises in a contradictory context, crossed by commodification processes of higher education in the country. Considering the role of the university in building the citizenship, we comprehend that the education to democracy should occupy central place in the formative processes. Thus, this paper intends to show the scope of the theoretical framework of human development and capabilities, developed by Amartya Sen (2010) and Martha Nussbaum (2010), to the Brazilian university social responsibility analysis. Through a methodological process based on hermeneutic, this study demonstrates the relationship between democracy and higher education, discusses social responsibility national regulations in a contextualized way in the contemporary scenario and reflects about what should be the responsibilities of the university when the horizon is in the formation of people able to both recognize and transform social realities. Therefore, the paper offers a reflection about the university role in the building of citizenship and democracy, demonstrating that the university social responsibility, when understood since the theoretical framework of human development, is a potential way to make feasible educational processes committed to the public good, what implies inside out movements, which refer not only to the students, but also to the academic community as a whole and broader institutional arrangements.
Key words:
Higher education; Education for democracy; University social responsibility; Human development