Integration of sustainable development in higher education's curricula of applied economics: Large-scale assessments, integration strategies and barriers

Abstract

The attention for sustainable development (SD) is ever growing (Van Poeck, Vandenabeele, & Bruyninckx, 2009). Although the importance of SD integration in higher education (HE), both on strategic and operational level, is often stressed, actual measurements of this integration are less frequent. Therefore, a large scale assessment was set up to assess SD integration within 33 professionally and academically oriented programs of applied economics in a total of 22 Flemish HE institutions. The integration of SD in applied economics programs is crucial for society, among others because business students are our future managers (Ceulemans & De Prins, 2010). The interrelations between different SD integration strategies and the barriers to them were also studied in this research, leading us to a new concept, where two different dimensions of SD integration are combined. From the research we can conclude that an SD integration approach that combines horizontal and vertical integration with bottom-up and top-down seems to be the most beneficial for sustained SD integration efforts.

An approach to the implementation of sustainability practices in Spanish universities

“…In the last two decades, an increasing number of higher education institutions have been engaged in incorporating and institutionalising sustainability into their systems (Ceulemans et al, 2011;Lozano et al, 2013;Shephard, 2008). This is arguably due to the increased level of consciousness in society of sustainability issues and the significant impacts of campus activities on both the environment and communities (Alshuwaikhat and Abubakar, 2008;Lozano, 2006).…”

An improved MULTIMOORA method with combined weights and its application in assessing the innovative ability of universities

“…A growing number of studies have been focused on the sustainability assessment of universities with different focus points. Concentrating on the programs of applied economics, Ceulemans, Prins, Cappuyns, and Coninck () performed large‐scale assessments of the sustainable development of 22 Flemish higher education institutions. Milutinović and Nikolić () assessed the current and future sustainability potential for universities in Serbia.…”

Development of a hands-on toolkit to support integration of ecodesign in engineering programmes

“…Both vertical and horizontal integration approaches can be combined. Many authors are in favour of the horizontal or the combined approach, because it focuses on the interdisciplinarity and necessity of a systemic and holistic approach (Ceulemans and De Prins, 2010;Ceulemans et al, 2011;Peet et al, 2004), however Allenby et al (2009) state that none of the approaches is preferable to any other, as all have their strengths and drawbacks. The EHE-kit introduces the two main integration methods and leaves the choice to the users when applying the toolkit to their own curriculum.…”