Greening of higher education in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

Numerous environmental protection issues and problems in the Republic of Serbia have forced the authors of this paper to devote their attention to research and analyse the current state of higher education for environmental protection within the Serbian educational context. More precisely, it is a continuation of the study entitled “Rethinking higher education for sustainable development in Serbia” (Milutinović and Nikolić, 2014), which was completed by the authors of this paper on the basis of the assessment of Copernicus Charter principles in higher education in the Republic of Serbia. In this paper, the results of the assessment of environmental programmes in current higher education practices are shown, and they were created within the project called University Educators for Sustainable Development - UE4SD, Lifelong Learning Programme, Erasmus Programme. The first part of the paper clarifies the need for and importance of greening higher education in the light of sustainable development concepts and strategies. The country context and regulatory frameworks of higher education and education for sustainable development in the Republic of Serbia are presented in the second part of the paper. The third part of the paper shows results of the analysis of Serbian higher education programmes in environmental protection, with a special emphasis on programmes for training future experts for environmental protection and the state of greening higher education in our country. In this regard, an analysis of present ecological ideas and content in the syllabus of the English language, which is one of the most common courses at Serbian faculties, and which is particularly important in response to the challenges of globalisation, knowledge flow, international scientific research and mobility, is performed. Finally, as part of the authors’ concluding remarks, improvements related to the period before the reform of higher education and adoption of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSDS) are presented. New directions of the education for environmental protection in higher education, as well as the importance of educating educators for sustainable development, are shown.