Reframing Lifelong Learning in Higher Education: Recognition, Care, and Civic Welfare

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretical-interpretive contribution to the sociology of lifelong learning (LLL), exploring a sociological reframing of lifelong learning through the concept of social love as an analytical framework for reading the institutional practices of universities in the domain of LLL. Drawing on classical and contemporary sociological traditions (including recognition theory, French pragmatic sociology, and relational sociology), the paper develops the argument that lifelong learning, when understood as a relational and generative practice, can be interpreted through the four dimensions of social love: overabundance, care, recognition, and universalism. The paper proposes what can be interpreted as a theoretical and educational transposition of the World Love Index (WLI) framework: a shift in scale, from the nation-state to the university, and in domain, from general social policy to educational practice, that preserves the core logic of the WLI while adapting it to the context of higher education. This transposition responds to a gap explicitly identified within the WLI research program and contributes to the debate on the civic and relational dimensions of higher education. Empirically, the paper draws on a national survey conducted within the Italian University Network for Lifelong Learning (RUIAP), which mapped lifelong learning services across 27 universities between 2022 and 2023. The survey data are used not as a basis for hypothesis testing but as exploratory empirical material through which to illustrate and develop the proposed framework, following a logic of theory elaboration. The findings reveal a heterogeneous and evolving system, characterized by uneven levels of institutionalization across the four dimensions: recognition practices are most widely present, though concentrated on formal pathways; care emerges in dedicated services for vulnerable and non-traditional populations; universalism remains largely unrealized in terms of territorial outreach; and overabundance (institutional investment exceeding regulatory compliance) is present in limited but analytically significant cases. The study concludes that understanding LLL as a practice of social love offers new insights into the civic mission of universities and their contribution to fostering social cohesion and democratic participation. It further proposes the need for observatories of institutional social love in higher education (such as RUIAP) and identifies directions for future research and policy oriented toward the generation of relational goods and the common good within university systems.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, research in the social sciences has increasingly recognized that processes of social fragmentation, individualization, and the weakening of collective bonds cannot be fully understood through economic or institutional categories alone. Affective and relational dynamics play a structural role in shaping social bonds and collective action, extending beyond the private sphere. Within this perspective, the notion of love acquires sociological relevance.

The concept of social love emerges as a theoretically composite construct, drawing on multiple traditions, including the agape tradition (Sorokin 1950), classical sociology (Simmel 1921, 2001), recognition theory (Honneth 1992), French pragmatic sociology (Boltanski 1990), and relational sociology (Donati 2011). Across these perspectives, social love can be understood as a form of relational action oriented toward the generation of relational goods, mutual responsibility, and durable social bonds, orientations that prove relevant not only at the interpersonal level but also for institutional practice.

It is grounded in an intentionality that transcends the logic of utilitarian exchange and is expressed in practices capable of producing trust, cooperation, and belonging (Cataldi and Iorio 2023; Iorio 2014, 2015). It therefore assumes relevance not only at the interpersonal level but also at the institutional level, informing public policies, organizational models, educational practices, and welfare arrangements.

The introduction of the concept of love into the sociological lexicon has raised criticisms, particularly due to the risk of romanticizing social relations or underestimating power asymmetries and conflict. However, within the relational perspective, social love does not represent a normative escape from social complexity but rather an analytical category that makes it possible to interrogate the quality of relationships and their generative capacity within contexts marked by inequalities.

Starting from this theoretical framework, the paper explores the transformative potential of the university (Casavecchia et al. 2025; Cocco et al. 2025) and of lifelong learning (Palumbo and Proietti 2020; Proietti and Scardigno 2025) through the lens of social love. In a historical phase characterized by new social vulnerabilities, widespread loneliness, and the redefinition of biographical trajectories, lifelong learning need not be reduced to a functional device for technical updating or mere employability; it can instead be interpreted as a relational and generative practice capable of producing recognition, belonging, and civic participation.

This paper is positioned as a theoretical-interpretive contribution. It draws on data from a national survey conducted within the Italian University Network for Lifelong Learning (RUIAP), not as a basis for hypothesis testing, but as an exploratory empirical reference point through which to illustrate and develop the proposed theoretical framework. This approach draws on what Vaughan (1992) calls “theory elaboration”. The RUIAP survey was designed and conducted independently, with the aim of mapping lifelong learning services across associated Italian universities, rather than departing from hypotheses derived from the social love framework. The theoretical operation performed here consists of bringing this empirical material into dialogue with the social love framework, asking whether and how institutional practices, policies, and organizational choices can be read through its four dimensions (overabundance, care, universalism, and recognition). The direction of the reasoning is interpretive rather than confirmatory: the framework is used as a heuristic lens to illuminate what is already present in the data, not as a set of hypotheses to be tested against it.

The data, collected through an online questionnaire administered to RUIAP member universities between 2022 and 2023, provide a descriptive mapping of lifelong learning services in Italian higher education. Their function here is to ground theoretical reflection in institutional practice, rather than to produce generalizable causal claims.

Despite growing scholarly interest in the civic and relational dimensions of higher education, the application of the concept of social love to the institutional context of lifelong learning remains largely unexplored. Existing contributions have examined social love primarily at the interpersonal or community level (Cataldi and Iorio 2023; Palmieri et al. 2021), while the potential of the framework to reinterpret institutional orientations in higher education has not yet been systematically developed. This paper seeks to fill this gap by proposing social love as an interpretive lens for reading university practices of lifelong learning.

Two guiding research questions orient the analysis:

(1)

To what extent can lifelong learning practices in Italian universities be read through the dimensions of social love?

(2)

Can the concept of social love offer an interpretive framework for reading and strengthening the social mission of the university in the context of lifelong learning?

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reconstructs the theoretical foundations of social love as a sociological category. Section 3 discusses its operationalization through the World Love Index (WLI) and reflects on the possibility of adapting this framework to educational institutions. Section 4 presents the RUIAP survey and situates it within the Italian regulatory context for lifelong learning. Furthermore, it interprets the survey findings through the four dimensions of social love, discussing how institutional practices can be read as expressions of relational orientations. The last section draws conclusions, identifies the paper’s theoretical contribution, and considers implications for university policy and future research.

2. Theoretical Framework: Love as a Sociological Category

In classical sociology, Simmel is among the few authors who explicitly addressed love as a genuinely social phenomenon. For Simmel (2001), love cannot be reduced to a private feeling but constitutes a form of interaction through which sociality itself is generated: every social fact is the outcome of relationships, and the effect of reciprocity represents the fundamental principle in the construction of solidarity. From this perspective, altruistic and unconditional love can be understood as a form of social action that transcends individual interest and contributes to the weaving of the social bond (Nardi 2024).

This theoretical insight finds a particularly illuminating application in Simmel’s analysis of poverty. In The Poor (Simmel [1908] 2015), poverty cannot be defined merely as a material condition of deprivation but must be understood in relation to the social reaction it elicits: the poor are those who receive assistance or who, according to social norms, are expected to receive it. Crucially, assistance produces social distance; accepting help transforms a private problem into a public issue, generating a condition of marginality analogous to that of the stranger. This reading anticipates later developments, from Becker’s (1963) labeling theory to Coser’s (1977) reflections on social types and highlights the relational and potentially stigmatizing nature of social categories.

This opens a question that runs through the present contribution: is it possible to conceive of help as an action capable of producing recognition without generating exclusion? It is precisely this tension, between care and stigmatization, between inclusion and distance, that the concept of social love seeks to address, by grounding relational action in recognition rather than in charity (Cataldi et al. 2016).

Building on this foundation, contemporary social theory has further elaborated the relational dimension of love within the dynamics of recognition and the justification of action. For Honneth (1992), love is its primary form, indispensable for the construction of identity and for social participation. Recognition unfolds within three spheres (love, rights, and solidarity), and the experience of being loved constitutes the preliminary condition for self-esteem and autonomy. Individual self-realization is, in this view, structurally intersubjective: principles of justice are reconstructed starting from historically embedded processes of recognition already operating in social reality (Cataldi 2018). The contribution of recognition theory is thus twofold: it anchors love to a broader framework of social justice, and it opens the way for analyzing institutions, including educational ones, as potential sites of recognition or its denial.

A complementary perspective is offered by Boltanski (1990), who, within the framework of French pragmatic sociology, has highlighted the plurality of action regimes and justificatory principles to which actors appeal in situations of testing. Alongside regimes grounded in equivalence and calculation, Boltanski identifies a “state of peace” in which actors suspend the logic of reciprocity and offer more than what the situation requires. Drawing on the distinction among eros, philia, and agape, he uses the latter to designate a specific form of action: one that is not based on desire, exchange, or compensation, that is directed toward concrete persons encountered in everyday life, and that does not expect counter-gifts. Agape thus emerges as a non-equivalent and non-instrumental form of social bond (Nardi 2024), one that resists the colonization of social relations by market logics.

These three perspectives (Simmel’s relational sociology, Honneth’s recognition theory, and Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology) converge in recognizing that the relational dimension of action cannot be reduced to utilitarian or neo-utilitarian logics, which often fail to account for phenomena that appear as “paradoxes” of social action (Cataldi et al. 2016). They also share a common concern: understanding how generative, non-instrumental bonds can be sustained within institutions and public practices.

On these grounds, the concept of social love has been developed as a fully sociological category. While drawing on a broader tradition that spans from Weber (1922) and Sorokin (1950) to Giddens (1992) and Bauman (2003) and has been consolidated by feminist scholarship (Jóhannesdóttir and Ferguson 2014) and the sociology of emotions (Scribano 2019), its current formulation assumes a more analytically circumscribed form. As elaborated within the International Sociological Association’s Thematic Group 12 “Social Love and Solidarity”, social love is defined as an action, relation, or social interaction in which individuals exceed the antecedents of the situation and offer more than is required to generate benefits (Araújo et al. 2015; Cataldi and Iorio 2023; Palmieri et al. 2021).

Although connected to concepts such as empathy, solidarity, gift-giving, reciprocity, and altruism, social love is distinct from each of them. Empathy concerns primarily a cognitive-emotional dimension and may lead to instrumental outcomes (Gallelli 2015; Iorio 2014). Solidarity is often grounded in formalized rights and duties. Gift-giving generally implies a logic of reciprocity. Altruism may be motivated by self-oriented aims. Social love, by contrast, is characterized by non-instrumentality and by the transcendence of equivalence-based logics (Cataldi et al. 2016). This distinction becomes analytically significant in institutional contexts, where the risk of collapsing care into bureaucratic management, or recognition into formal compliance, is particularly acute.

Within this scenario, social love does not represent a nostalgic return to premodern models. Rather, it designates a specific mode of social action capable of exceeding equivalence-based logics, counteracting exclusionary dynamics, and resisting the colonization of social relations by market logics. In this sense, it grounds practices of civil welfare oriented toward inclusion and the regeneration of bonds of recognition within contemporary institutions. Illouz (2007) has shown how contemporary capitalism increasingly intertwines economic and emotional dimensions, while intimate relationships incorporate logics of negotiation and equivalence. In parallel, the figure of homo agapicus (Iorio 2014) describes a subject capable of generating non-instrumental bonds, whereas Cesareo and Vaccarini (2006) identify homo civicus as the central type of contemporaneity. The transformation of hierarchical structures into networks (Castells 1996) and the reorganization of power relations into more fluid forms (Sennett 2000, 2007) redefine the conditions of solidarity and recognition (Nardi 2024).

As Donati (2011) argues within relational sociology, social love can be understood as a relational good: something generated in and through relationships, irreducible to individual contributions or bureaucratic procedures. It is in this sense that it becomes relevant not only at the interpersonal level but also at the institutional level, as a framework for interrogating the quality of social bonds produced by public organizations, including universities.

3. Applying the Framework in Measurement Terms: Operationalizing Social Love

The theoretical construct of social love is not confined to normative or speculative elaboration: it has been subject to systematic empirical operationalization through the World Love Index (WLI)1, a composite index developed within the ISA’s Thematic Group 12 aimed at measuring the presence and intensity of social love both at the individual and at the institutional level (Cataldi et al. 2024). The underlying assumption is that social love is an empirically observable social force, capable of promoting cohesion, resilience, and collective well-being and therefore measurable through appropriate indicators.

The WLI is structured around two complementary components. The Citizens’ Index captures individual-level orientations (behaviors, attitudes, and values), drawing on secondary sources such as the World Values Survey, the European Values Study (EVS-WVS 2017–2022), and the World Giving Index. The Institutional Index measures the extent to which collective actors (states, organizations, institutions) are oriented toward social love in their policies and practices. In its current formulation, the Institutional WLI draws on internationally accredited sources, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals database, World Bank data, the Human Development Report (UNDP HDR 2021–2022), the Inclusiveness Index of the Othering & Belonging Institute, and the Good Country Index, covering 85 countries (Cataldi et al. 2024).

Both components are organized around the four constitutive dimensions of social love, which it is worth introducing here in their full analytical scope. Overabundance refers to actions and policies that exceed normative obligations and equivalence-based logics, offering more than the situation strictly requires. Care designates an orientation toward the protection and flourishing of others and of the environment, directed toward vulnerable groups. Universalism expresses openness beyond primary bonds and in-group boundaries, toward strangers, foreigners, and future generations. Recognition concerns the valorization of the other’s irreducible uniqueness, actively resisting processes of stigmatization or forced assimilation. Together, these four dimensions constitute a framework for reading not only individual conduct but also institutional orientations, that is, the relational quality embedded in organizational practices and policy choices.

The institutional dimension of the WLI is what makes it analytically relevant for the present contribution. Universities are institutions, and their practices (how they organize lifelong learning services, whom they include, how they relate to learners across the life course) can be read as expressions of relational orientations that either embody or fall short of the four dimensions described above. Yet the existing Institutional WLI was not designed with educational institutions in mind: its indicators operate at the level of nation-states, covering policies on migration, environmental protection, international cooperation, and social inclusion. A direct application to universities is therefore not feasible.

This limitation is acknowledged within the WLI research program itself. Cataldi et al. (2024) explicitly identify the extension of the institutional framework to new domains of public action as a necessary next step in the development of the index. The present paper takes up this invitation by proposing what we might call a theoretical and educational transposition of the framework: a shift in scale, from the nation-state to the university, and a shift in domain, from general social policy to educational practice. This transposition preserves the core logic of the WLI: institutions can be assessed not only by their formal outputs but by the relational quality they generate. It adapts this logic to a context in which that relational quality is expressed through lifelong learning services, guidance practices, validation procedures, and territorial partnerships. In this sense, the four dimensions of social love provide a vocabulary for making visible what is often implicit in institutional action. They allow us to ask: to what degree do universities exceed minimum obligations, care for diverse and vulnerable populations, recognize the uniqueness of individual trajectories, and open themselves to communities beyond their traditional boundaries?

The educational sphere is, in this sense, a privileged site for observing and activating social love. Today, it is conceived not only as unidirectional transmission of content but as a generative relational practice; for this reason, it becomes a terrain for social transformation. Nussbaum (2001, 2013) further grounds this intuition: emotions have a cognitive and normative structure insofar as they involve evaluative judgments about what is valuable and worthy of concern, and democratic societies require the cultivation of public emotions capable of sustaining justice and inclusive citizenship.

In this light, the educational relationship can be oriented toward recognizing the other as an end, grounded in reciprocity and care. Universities, as institutional actors, can either foster or inhibit this orientation. They may promote forms of affective citizenship, fostering empathy, responsibility, and attentiveness to vulnerability. The ethics of care and dialogical approaches converge in conceiving education as a relational and transformative endeavor. In a context marked by performative metrics and individualized competition, social love may also assume a critical dimension, functioning as an orienting principle capable of countering processes of dehumanization and reinforcing the ethical-political dimension of education and training.

It is against this theoretical backdrop that the RUIAP survey data are interpreted in the sections that follow.

4. Universities and the Right to Lifelong Learning: The RUIAP Survey

The role of universities in building the national system of lifelong learning and in certifying competences is explicitly defined in Italy by Article 4 of Law 92/2012 and the Decree 13/2013. Beyond regulatory alignment with European guidelines, the reform signaled a paradigmatic shift: lifelong learning was redefined as an individual right rather than merely a domain of service provision. The legislation laid the foundations for a coordinated national system involving universities, regional authorities, employment services, and territorial actors, promoting integrated networks (the Territorial Networks for Lifelong Learning) that connect education, training, guidance and labor-market policies. It also established common standards for validation and certification procedures and reinforced the role of guidance as a structural component of lifelong learning pathways.

Within this framework, universities were assigned a strategic role in implementing recognition and certification processes and in contributing to the construction of territorial learning ecosystems. The reform thus reconfigured institutional responsibilities, shifting attention from the supply of educational programs to the enforceability of the individual’s right to learn across the life course. Interpreting this reform through the lens of social love allows its institutional implications to emerge more clearly. The recognition and validation of prior learning can be understood as an institutionalized form of recognition, insofar as competences acquired outside formal pathways are publicly acknowledged and endowed with social value. The emphasis on guidance and personalized pathways reflects a dimension of care. The construction of a universal access framework embodies universalism. And where institutions invest relational resources beyond minimal compliance, actively including marginalized individuals or those with nontraditional learning paths, one can identify a dimension of overabundance. From this perspective, Law 92/2012 and Decree 13/2013 do not merely regulate lifelong learning services: they establish the conditions under which relational goods can be institutionally generated and distributed.

4.1. From Learnfare to Social Love: Contextualizing the University’s Role

The right to lifelong learning is now an integral component of citizenship rights and a structural element of contemporary welfare systems. The debate oscillates between workfarist models, inspired by liberal activation (Borghi 2006), in which employment represents the primary form of social participation (Barbier 2004; Colasanto and Lodigiani 2008) and enabling models oriented toward universalistic activation and the enhancement of lifelong learning and individual empowerment. The learnfare perspective represents an attempt at synthesis: an active welfare system in which education, vocational training, and continuous learning are configured as citizenship rights and as levers of active participation, employability, and social inclusion (Lodigiani 2020). Going beyond the false dilemma between economicism and inclusion, this perspective translates an expansive conception of human capital into human capability (Sen 1999): public intervention does not merely provide resources but expands the real freedoms available to individuals (including the freedom to learn across the life course) so that they can convert resources into genuine opportunities for choice and action.

Within this framework, the university occupies a structurally ambivalent position. On one hand, it is called upon to embody the maximalist aspiration of a genuinely inclusive learning society, extending access to diverse populations across the life course. On the other hand, it operates under conditions of resource scarcity, growing precarity (Berti and Valzania 2020), and the risk of reproducing the very individualization it seeks to counter, transforming lifelong learning from a right into a duty, and education from a public good into a commodity (Biesta 2006; Lodigiani 2020). This tension is not merely institutional but also ethical in nature: it raises questions about the quality of the relationships that universities generate with learners, communities, and territories.

It is precisely at this juncture that the concept of social love becomes analytically productive. The learnfare paradigm, in its enabling formulation, already implicitly invokes dimensions of care, recognition, and universalism, but without a relational vocabulary capable of making these orientations visible and evaluable at the institutional level. Social love may provide that vocabulary. Reading university practices through its four dimensions allows us to ask not only whether institutions formally comply with regulatory obligations, but whether they may generate forms of relational goods: whether they exceed minimum requirements, attend to the specificity of individual trajectories, open themselves to non-traditional and marginalized populations, and build bonds of reciprocity with the communities they serve.

4.2. The Survey: Design, Authorship, and Instrument

More than ten years after Law 92/2012 came into force, the Italian University Network for Lifelong Learning (RUIAP) promoted a mapping of the lifelong learning services activated within its member universities. The present contribution is situated within this collective research endeavor. The author is an associate professor at one of the RUIAP member universities, whose research and teaching are grounded in the sociology of work and organizations, with a specific focus on lifelong learning policies and organizational practices. As part of the broader RUIAP research team, she participated in the design of the survey instrument, its administration, and the analysis of results (Proietti and Scardigno 2023, 2025). This insider positioning facilitated access to institutional knowledge and informed the interpretive choices made throughout the analysis.

The mapping was carried out through a structured online questionnaire administered between 2022 and 2023 to all 32 universities participating in RUIAP, of which 27 responded. Respondents were the universities’ RUIAP delegates (individuals with technical expertise and qualified institutional knowledge) who in several cases interacted with other senior actors such as Rectorates, Internationalization Offices, or delegates for Third Mission and Lifelong Learning.

The questionnaire comprised 14 main items with multiple sub-questions, organized around thematically coherent domains. It combined closed questions (yes/no) with open-ended descriptive responses and was preceded by a shared terminological declaration designed to delimit a common semantic area, reduce respondents’ interpretive discretion, and ensure greater comparability across institutions (Benevene et al. 2023).

Given the exploratory and descriptive nature of the instrument and the limited number of responding institutions, the data are presented in tabular and narrative form rather than through statistical aggregation. This choice is methodologically consistent with the theoretical-interpretive positioning of the contribution: the data function as institutional illustrations of the framework, not as a basis for generalizable causal claims.

The survey explored the following domains: the presence of Lifelong Learning Centers (LLC) or equivalent structures; services for the recognition of formal, non-formal, and informal prior learning; participation in regional processes for the Identification, Validation, and Certification of Competences (IVCC); services for the visibility of soft skills and transversal competences; micro-credentials and open badges; lifelong guidance actions; participation in formal Territorial Networks for Lifelong Learning; participation in informal networks for the promotion of lifelong learning practices; and outreach and guidance activities directed at non-traditional learners.

The RUIAP dataset is not openly accessible: it is available exclusively to member universities. It should also be noted that the survey captured a snapshot of lifelong learning services at the time of data collection; the landscape is continuously evolving, and some institutional arrangements may have changed since the survey was conducted.

The research responds to the need (emerging particularly within the academic context) to exercise reflexivity “in the midst of action” (Schön 1983), interrogating organizational practices from within and assessing their concrete effects. The underlying assumption is that established devices are not necessarily effective, and that the right to lifelong learning requires systematic verification of the level of institutionalization of the services implemented. The evaluative framework adopted is constructivist in nature (Moro 2005; Palumbo and Scardigno 2024). The selection of evaluation objects was defined based on the themes considered relevant by the participating universities. The judgment criteria were anchored to the values expressed by stakeholders committed to promoting the right to learn and to ensuring the recognition and certification of competences acquired not only in formal contexts but also in non-formal and informal ones.

Selected responses are cited verbatim in the analysis that follows, in their original Italian with English translation provided by the author, as illustrative evidence of the institutional orientations described. Respondents are identified by role and macro-geographical area to preserve institutional anonymity while retaining contextual specificity.

4.3. Research Findings: Reading University Practices Through the Dimensions of Social Love

The analysis of the 27 responding universities reveals a heterogeneous and evolving landscape, summarized in

Table 1. Lifelong learning services in 27 RUIAP universities (2022–2023).

Lifelong Learning Services	No
Universities responding	27
Dedicated LLL services	6
Recognition of formal prior learning	21
Recognition of non-formal prior learning	13
Recognition of informal prior learning	9
Services for recognition of soft skills	12
Services for identification, validation and certification of competences with Regions	2
Micro-credentials and open badge experiences	10
Participation in formal Territorial Networks for Lifelong Learning	4
Participation in other LLL networks	6
Lifelong guidance for non-traditional learners	3

. Rather than presenting the findings as a neutral descriptive inventory, this section interprets them through the four dimensions of social love, treating each dimension as an analytical lens through which institutional orientations become visible.

4.3.1. Recognition

The valorization of the other’s irreducible uniqueness is the dimension most visibly present in the data, though in uneven and partially contradictory forms. The near-universal presence of formal prior learning recognition (21 out of 27 universities) signals that Italian universities have broadly internalized the regulatory mandate of Law 92/2012. However, recognition practices remain largely anchored to traditional academic criteria: credit transfer mechanisms predominantly concern formal learning pathways, with structured procedures for the acknowledgment of previously earned academic credits. Recognition of non-formal learning is present in 13 universities, often in relation to specific professional experiences or voluntary activities; recognition of informal learning, by contrast, is active in only 9 institutions, and frequently limited to work experiences that can be assimilated into mandatory internship requirements.

This asymmetry is confirmed by delegates’ own accounts. Several respondents described recognition practices confined to formally equivalent academic credits: “only within departments, in relation to the recognition of credits for university-level examinations” (RUIAP delegate, Southern Italy). Others noted that informal learning tends to be acknowledged exclusively within internship frameworks: credits “are recognized within the study plan under the heading of internship or other activities” (RUIAP delegate, Central Italy). The absence of centralized structures further compounds this fragmentation: recognition operates “not at the central level, but at the faculty level, and not uniformly across faculties” (RUIAP delegate, Northern Italy).

We can observe a partial and graduated institutionalization of recognition: the further learning moves from formal academic contexts, the less systematically it is acknowledged. From the perspective of social love, this suggests that institutional recognition still tends to valorize learners insofar as they resemble the traditional student, rather than in their irreducible specificity. The transformative potential of recognition (its capacity to validate trajectories that deviate from normative pathways) remains only partially realized.

4.3.2. Care

The orientation toward the flourishing of the other, particularly in conditions of vulnerability, emerges most clearly in those universities that have developed services explicitly targeting non-traditional populations: adult learners, workers, refugees, incarcerated persons, and individuals with migration backgrounds. Several institutions report dedicated pathways for the recognition of competences acquired in contexts of social marginality, including regional certification processes for professional figures such as intercultural mediators and family caregivers. In these cases, the university functions not merely as an accrediting body but as a relational actor that accompanies individuals through complex transitions.

This relational function is most visible in institutions that have developed structured accompaniment services. One respondent described a competency assessment laboratory active since 2004, dedicated to supporting students in making visible skills acquired through work and life experience (RUIAP delegate, Southern Italy). Another described services explicitly oriented toward asylum seekers and refugees: “the service responds to the specific needs of a significant number of users seeking active employment” (RUIAP delegate, Southern Italy). A third institution reported recognition activities directed at adult learners, workers, adult students of education centers, and third-sector volunteers, extending the university’s caring function well beyond the boundaries of traditional academic populations (RUIAP delegate, Central Italy).

Guidance services are widely present across the sample, but their organizational positioning varies significantly. Where guidance is integrated into lifelong learning units and linked to validation procedures, it functions as a genuinely caring device, one that attends to the specificity of individual trajectories and supports learners across biographical transitions. Elsewhere, it remains primarily informative, reflecting a thinner institutional interpretation of care. Services for the visibility of soft skills (12 universities) and micro-credential experiences (10 universities) represent further expressions of an institutional orientation toward care, insofar as they seek to make visible competencies that would otherwise remain unrecognized within formal academic frameworks.

4.3.3. Universalism

Openness beyond primary bonds and institutional boundaries, toward those who are different or distant, is the dimension that reveals the greatest gap between normative aspiration and empirical reality. Although the regulatory framework formally universalizes access to lifelong learning, participation in the territorial networks through which that universalism could be operationalized remains limited: only 4 universities participate in formal LLL Territorial Networks, and 6 in other collaborative arrangements with territorial actors. Outreach and guidance activities directed at non-traditional learners beyond the enrolled student population are present in only 3 institutions.

The survey responses reflect this limitation directly. In several universities, outreach to non-traditional populations is not yet structurally embedded: “there is no dedicated structure yet, but individuals who carry out this function” (RUIAP delegate, Northern Italy). Territorial network participation, where present, is often at an early experimental stage: one respondent described “an experimentation underway within the European university network” (RUIAP delegate, Central Italy), signaling aspiration rather than consolidation. Exceptions exist: one institution described systematic research and practice on “the certification of competences of adults acquired in university, work, and informal contexts, with particular attention to gender differences” (RUIAP delegate, Northern Italy), but they remain isolated cases rather than systemic orientations.

These figures suggest that the universalistic principle embedded in Law 92/2012 is normatively established but empirically uneven. Most universities remain primarily oriented toward their enrolled student bodies, with limited institutional investment in extending lifelong learning opportunities to populations who have not yet entered, or have long since left, the formal educational system. The construction of more inclusive territorial learning ecosystems, in which universities function as civic actors alongside their role as academic service providers, remains a largely unrealized aspiration.

4.3.4. Overabundance

Institutional investment that exceeds minimum regulatory compliance, offering more than the situation strictly requires, is the rarest and most demanding dimension, and the data reflect this. Instances of overabundance emerge where universities have actively built territorial partnerships, developed flexible validation pathways for marginalized groups, or engaged in cross-institutional projects that go beyond their statutory obligations.

Instances of overabundance emerge most clearly in a small number of institutions that have built dedicated infrastructures and extended their services to populations not covered by regulatory obligations. One university described issuing, for the first time in Italy, a professional qualification to two Afghan refugees (“intercultural mediation technician”) through a regional certification process activated by the university’s Lifelong Learning Center (RUIAP delegate, Southern Italy). Another reported systematic recognition of competences acquired through volunteering and third-sector activity, directed at “voluntary workers, managers and staff of third-sector organizations” through externally funded projects (RUIAP delegate, Central Italy). A third institution described a Center offering “targeted recognition and preliminary assessment of formal qualifications; transparency, validation and certification of professional qualifications; recognition and validation of soft skills and transversal competencies”, a comprehensive infrastructure that positions the university as a civic actor rather than merely a teaching institution (RUIAP delegate, Southern Italy).

The cases, where certification processes have been extended to refugees, third-sector workers, and individuals with non-traditional professional backgrounds, represent the most visible expressions of this orientation. In these institutions, lifelong learning is not merely administered but actively constructed as a relational good, generated through sustained investment in relationships with communities, regional actors, and vulnerable populations. These cases remain limited in number, but they are analytically significant: they illustrate that the four dimensions of social love are not merely normative ideals but observable institutional orientations, present, if unevenly distributed, within the Italian university system.

Table 2. Dimensions of social love and institutional contributions of the university in lifelong learning.

Dimension	Institutional Expression	Examples from RUIAP Survey
Recognition	Validation of formal, non-formal, and informal prior learning; micro-credentials; soft skills visibility	Credit recognition (21 universities); non-formal recognition (13); informal recognition (9); open badges (10)
Care	Guidance integrated with validation; services for vulnerable and non-traditional populations; personalized learning pathways	Integrated guidance services; dedicated pathways for refugees, workers, incarcerated persons
Universalism	Participation in territorial networks; outreach to non-enrolled populations; inter-institutional partnerships	LLL Territorial Networks participation (4); other networks (6); guidance for non-traditional learners (3)
Overabundance	Institutional investment exceeding regulatory compliance; proactive inclusion of marginalized groups; generation of relational goods beyond functional requirements	Regional certification for refugees and third-sector workers

offers a synoptic overview of the four dimensions as they emerge from the survey data, mapping each dimension onto its institutional expressions and grounding it in concrete examples drawn from the responding universities. The table is not intended as a comprehensive taxonomy but as an analytical device: it makes visible the relational quality embedded (unevenly, and at varying degrees of intensity) in the lifelong learning practices of Italian universities and provides a reference framework for the interpretive discussion that follows in Section 4.4.

4.4. RUIAP as a Possible Observatory of Institutional Social Love

The findings presented above suggest that the four dimensions of social love are not uniformly distributed across Italian universities, but neither are they absent: they emerge, with varying degrees of intensity and consolidation, in the organizational choices, service configurations, and territorial engagements of specific institutions. This uneven distribution is itself analytically significant. It indicates that the relational quality of lifelong learning services is not merely a function of regulatory compliance or resource availability, but reflects deeper institutional orientations—orientations that can, in principle, be observed, mapped, and compared over time.

It is in this perspective that RUIAP acquires a potential function that goes beyond its current role as a coordination network. The survey data analyzed here represent a first systematic mapping of lifelong learning services across member universities, but their analytical value extends beyond the descriptive. RUIAP brings together institutions that share a commitment to the right to lifelong learning and that have chosen to make their practices visible and comparable through a collective research endeavor. This makes it a privileged site for observing the degree to which Italian universities embody, or fall short of, the dimensions of social love in their institutional action.

This suggests the possibility of developing RUIAP as an ongoing observatory of institutional social love in higher education: a structured space for longitudinal monitoring of the relational quality of lifelong learning services, capable of tracking changes over time, identifying good practices, and supporting policy dialogue between universities, regional actors, and national bodies. Such an observatory would not require the construction of a new quantitative index; the complexity and qualitative richness of institutional practices, as the survey data clearly show, resist reduction to single metrics. Rather, it would involve the periodic application of the four-dimensional framework proposed here, through mixed-methods approaches that combine descriptive mapping with interpretive analysis of specific cases.

This proposal is consistent with the broader trajectory of the WLI research program, which explicitly identifies the extension of the institutional framework to new domains of public action as a necessary development (Cataldi et al. 2024). An educational observatory grounded in the RUIAP network would represent precisely such an extension, one that is empirically grounded, institutionally embedded, and capable of generating comparative knowledge about the relational quality of higher education systems across time and context.

In this sense, the present contribution is not only a theoretical-interpretive exercise but also a methodological proposal: it suggests that the concept of social love, operationalized through its four dimensions, can serve as a practical framework for universities to reflect on their own institutional orientations, evaluate the relational quality of their lifelong learning services and orient their strategic choices toward the generation of genuine relational goods. The observatory proposal, in particular, operates on three connected levels: as a methodological contribution, offering a framework and approach for monitoring institutional orientations over time; as a future research direction, identifying longitudinal and comparative studies as necessary next steps; and as a policy recommendation, inviting universities and networks such as RUIAP to consider systematic, ongoing evaluation of the relational quality of their lifelong learning services.

This exercise highlighted how LLL traverses academic missions and demands more robust coordination mechanisms. The relevance of this issue is likely to increase, considering the Italian Ministerial Decree of 4 July 2024, which extends beyond the limit of 12 ECTS the possibility of recognizing competences acquired in lifelong learning contexts, significantly expanding the potential organizational and cultural impact of such processes.

5. Conclusions: Lifelong Learning Policies as a Variable of the Social Love Index

This paper set out to explore whether and how the concept of social love may offer an interpretive framework for reading the institutional practices of Italian universities in the domain of lifelong learning, and whether the World Love Index framework can be transposed, theoretically and educationally, to the context of higher education. The analysis has proceeded on two complementary levels, theoretical and empirical, and the conclusions that follow are organized accordingly, before turning to implications for policy and future research.

The paper’s central theoretical contribution lies in the transposition of the World Love Index framework to higher education, preserving its core relational logic: institutions can be evaluated not only by their formal outputs but by the relational quality they generate. This move addresses a gap identified within the WLI research program (Cataldi et al. 2024) and contributes to the debate on the civic and relational dimensions of higher education by offering a conceptual vocabulary to make visible what often remains implicit in institutional practices. The paper also aims at contributing to the sociology of lifelong learning by showing that the learnfare paradigm implicitly invokes the dimensions of social love yet lacks a framework capable of operationalizing them at the institutional level. In this perspective, social love provides analytically bounded categories through which the ethical-political dimension of lifelong learning can be interrogated, moving beyond dominant functionalist and employability-oriented approaches. Rather than romanticizing institutional action, this perspective introduces a more demanding standard, questioning whether universities generate relational goods or merely administer services.

The findings reveal a heterogeneous and unevenly institutionalized landscape of lifelong learning services across Italian universities. Read through the four dimensions of social love, a differentiated configuration emerges: recognition is the most established dimension, though still largely anchored to formal learning pathways; care is visible in institutions that have developed dedicated services for vulnerable and non-traditional populations; universalism remains limited, with weak participation in territorial networks and restricted outreach beyond enrolled students; and overabundance is rare, appearing only in cases of proactive institutional investment exceeding regulatory requirements. Overall, the survey highlights the fragmentation of LLL initiatives and their incomplete integration into universities’ strategic frameworks. Despite its exploratory nature, the study confirms that lifelong learning remains an open challenge, requiring coordinated action among multiple actors, as no single institution possesses sufficient resources to ensure its full implementation.

In terms of implications for policy and future research, supporting the right to lifelong learning may entail strengthening individuals’ capacity to shape their own life projects, by activating and valorizing knowledge acquired across the life course (Merico and Scardigno 2022). At the same time, it requires fostering more conscious, participatory, and responsible social action (Costa 2016), grounded in coherent and coordinated institutional roles. In this perspective, learnfare necessitates building new alliances among stakeholders, which may be found in the Territorial Networks for Lifelong Learning, a privileged operational space (Palumbo and Proietti 2020). Networks may function not only as technical coordination tools but as sites for negotiating shared meanings, priorities, and responsibilities (Proietti 2021), spaces in which the dimensions of social love are, arguably, most likely to be activated and sustained.

The regulatory emphasis on the centrality of the person within the LLL system, rather than on the centrality of services, entails a shift in perspective that directly challenges institutions. If citizens are required to exercise the right, and to some extent the duty, to learn throughout life, educational organizations may be expected to make services more recognizable, accessible, and transparent, moving beyond self-referential logics and adopting practices more oriented to users’ actual needs. From the perspective of social love, this means attending not only to formal accessibility but to the relational quality of the encounter between institutions and learners, whether that encounter produces recognition, generates belonging, and opens genuine possibilities for biographical transformation.

The findings suggest the possibility of developing networks as an ongoing observatory of institutional social love in higher education (RUIAP can be a virtuous example): structured spaces for longitudinal monitoring of the relational quality of lifelong learning services, capable of tracking changes over time, identifying and disseminating good practices, and supporting policy dialogue between universities, regional actors, and national bodies. Such an observatory would not require the construction of a new quantitative index (the complexity and qualitative richness of institutional practices resist reduction to single metrics) but would involve the periodic application of the four-dimensional framework proposed here, through mixed methods approaches that combine descriptive mapping with interpretive analysis of specific cases.

This contribution has several limitations that future research should address. The survey data, while rich in qualitative detail, are based on a limited sample of 27 universities and reflect a single point in time: longitudinal data would be necessary to track institutional change and assess the durability of relational orientations. The theoretical transposition proposed here remains exploratory, and a more systematic operationalization of the four dimensions in the educational context, including the development of indicators adapted to university practices, would strengthen the empirical foundations of the framework. The Italian case, while analytically productive, limits the generalizability of the findings. Comparative research across different national higher education systems would allow for a more robust assessment of how regulatory frameworks, institutional cultures, and the generation of relational goods interact in lifelong learning contexts. Finally, the voices of learners themselves, particularly non-traditional and marginalized populations, are absent from the survey data, which was collected exclusively from institutional representatives. Future research should integrate learner perspectives to assess whether and how institutional orientations toward social love translate into meaningful relational experiences for those they are meant to serve.

The transformation of educational spaces can be read in this light. Universities, digital environments, workplaces, libraries, community spaces, and territorial networks are not simply physical or technological sites of learning, but relational contexts in which shared meanings are constructed, and learning and work experiences become concrete opportunities of empowerment.

From this perspective, several research paths emerge: examining how social love can transform university teaching practices; identifying methods and tools for an intentional education in care and solidarity; studying curricular and extracurricular practices that foster relationships grounded in trust and reciprocity; exploring the role of informal and digital educational spaces in generating transformative bonds; and defining the institutional contribution of universities to building territorial ecosystems oriented toward social love.

The findings point to a broader question about the identity and mission of the university in contemporary societies. The university is, first and foremost, an institution called upon to transmit and produce knowledge. Yet in contexts increasingly marked by old and new forms of inequality, this epistemic mission cannot be separated from a civic one: universities may also configure themselves as social infrastructures capable of promoting active citizenship, inclusion, and relational wellbeing—not by adding modules on soft skills or wellbeing, but by reconsidering their institutional culture as oriented toward an inclusive and intergenerational learning community that values experiential knowledge and recognizes learning as a process of reciprocal transformation, contributing to social cohesion, democratic participation, and the generation of relational goods.