The Role of Universities in Sustainability-Oriented Competencies Development: Insights from an Empirical Study on Polish Universities

Abstract

The growing importance of sustainable development constitutes a challenging trend for education. Universities create study programs and organize extracurricular activities in order to prepare future generations of professionals as well as political and social leaders for responsible actions toward sustainable development. The main objective of this article is to investigate how universities in Poland develop educational programs and extracurricular activities to enable students to shape sustainability competencies. The study employed a triangulation of research methods including a literature analysis, desk research analysis of the universities’ educational programs, and quantitative research among students. The findings suggest that Polish universities attempt to shape sustainable development-oriented competencies not only through formal sustainable development education, but also via non-formal activities toward social and environmental challenges. The research results have practical implications for universities and can support the advancement of educational programs related to sustainable development.

Engineers Changing the World: Education for Sustainability in Romanian Technical Universities—An Empirical Web-Based Content Analysis

“…Education for sustainable development is a concept that has been debated upon by a lot of researchers [14,16,17,22,28,34] based on the fact that: "An empowering education is one that builds the human resources we need to be productive, to continue to learn, to solve problems, to be creative, and to live together and with nature in peace and harmony. When nations ensure that such an education is accessible to all throughout their lives, a quiet revolution is set in motion: education becomes the engine of sustainable development (economic, social, moral, intellectual, and cultural) and the key to a better world" [65].…”

“…Acting sustainably means that individuals first need to acquire sustainability-oriented competencies that can be developed through education and by introducing innovative forms of teaching and learning and reinforced through media communication and community actions. Sady et al (2019) identified the core competencies of sustainability, namely: Responsibility (ethics), critical thinking, future orientation, communication and collaboration, systemic thinking and learning [16].…”

“…This is also the reason why we focused our research on the topic of education for sustainability in higher engineering education. Although there are many studies targeting similar topics regarding the universities' role in developing and enhancing sustainability-oriented competencies [2,7,[14][15][16][17], few of them are solely focused on analyzing the approach that technical universities have towards integrating sustainability and sustainable development into their curricula [11,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

Two Heads Are Better Than One—Entrepreneurial Continuous Learning through Massive Open Online Courses

“…Entrepreneurship today is conceptualised as a universal set of skills and attitudes that can be applied in every context, and that is essential at all stages of a professional career [1,2]. Employee-level entrepreneurial competence is often indicated by research and practice as the prime type of competence, necessary in today's business reality to handle proactively contemporary workplace challenges [3][4][5][6]. This is why employees often seek to develop their entrepreneurial skills throughout their career by pursuing continuous lifelong learning.…”

The Impact of Perceived Organizational Support on the Quality of Educational Services at Arab Universities

“…University education is the focus of attention of all countries, due to the great role that university education plays in preparing and making future generations, the main drive for economic and social sectors (Sady et al, 2019). In light of the increased competition in the educational sector in the Arab countries and the shortage of job opportunities faced by university graduates, these universities should, Arab universities should re-double their efforts to build an educated person capable of actively taking part in achieving the development programs that help such countries compete at the local, regional, and global levels (Issa & Siddiek, 2012).…”