Competences represent a summary of key professional and personal skills/talents and behavioural patterns of an individual. They form the basis of any proficient working behaviour, and the level of their maturity is crucial for the successful performance of the profession concerned. From this point of view, the competences of university teachers are of exceptional importance, mainly because teachers constitute the basis for the creation of new knowledge and new values beneficial to the university as well as to students, and subsequently also to enterprises in the role of employers, who should be able to use reasonably and develop systematically the mature competences of their employees. The intention of the study is to analyse the professional-personal profile of university teachers and the competences they should have. The study also presents outcomes of a questionnaire-based survey conducted with a sample of 686 students of the University of Žilina, the Slovak Republic. The first stage of our survey (2012/2013, 395 students) focused on questioning as to which competences the teacher should have according to students. The second stage of our survey (2013/2014), which is dealt with in this study, focuses on defining the negative competences and characteristics of teachers, i.e. it focuses on the question as to which features the teacher should certainly not have. In addition to interesting outcomes of the survey, the most important part of the study is an originally created competence model of the university teacher. Such competence model should become a quality standard or a paragon of the positive indicators of the teacher's working behaviour. The model also needs to clearly define the negative indicators (undesirable behaviour) which teachers should eliminate from their performance and behaviour. Persistence of such behaviour should be strictly penalised by the management of the faculty or university.

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The article examines motivation in higher education and relates it to the concept of sustainability. It consists of a theoretical examination of the terms ‘sustainable motivation’ and ‘academic motivation’, and specifically postulates and explains the concept of ‘sustainable academic motivation’. Sustainable academic motivation is defined as proactive interconnection of basic ideas of sustainability and basic characteristics of academic motivation. With primary attention on disclosing appropriate measures for building sustainable academic motivation, an empirical part presents the results of sociological questioning carried out on n = 181 teachers, administrators, and managers of Slovak and Polish universities. Higher financial evaluation and creating good relationships were found to be the most desirable motivation measures. Results also emphasized a discrepancy between opinions of university managers versus opinions of scientists and teachers regarding effective motivation. Based on the results, and with the support of other opinions, sustainable academic motivation is subsequently defined from five perspectives: (a) As the most important component of conscious behavior; (b) as the starting point of behavior; (c) as the accelerator of behavior and development; (d) as the process; and (e) as the resultative level of all motivational efforts and powers at higher-education institutions. The final part of the article contains recommendations for university management, when affecting and building sustainable academic motivation.