Higher education: Features, trends and needs in relation to sustainability

Higher education: Features, trends and needs in relation to sustainability

Maragakis, A.
Van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F.

Architecture

Architectural Engineering and Technology

2013-01-31

The progress of sustainability within higher education has steadily increased in focus over the last decade and has increasingly become a topic of academic research. With various scholars, journals and conferences exclusively dealing with the subject, a wealth of literature has been produced on best practices, suggestions, and assessments pertaining to sustainability within the higher education field. Higher education stakeholders, who for this paper are defined as being the potential/current students, staff and management, continue to become more conscious of the principles of sustainability. This higher level of understanding promotes the needs to assess existing literature in relation to the actual needs of the stakeholders in order to identify existing features, trends and needs so that there is continual improvement in the field. This paper shows that sustainability is currently a socially desirable trait but other factors, such as becoming more competitive in the job market, supersede it in importance to stakeholders. It also shows that there is a general need for a standardized method for assessing institutions, with AASHE’s STARS system being the most used system.

sustainable development
higher hducation
universities
sustainable education
sustainable assessment
AASHE
STARS

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4b307380-2960-48e1-a6cc-bb186d518095

2151-7452

Journal of Sustainability Education, 4(Jan)2013

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) Maragakis, A., Van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F.