Sustainable Development of Universities

With the emergence of the UN agenda until 2030 where 17 goals in the sphere of support of sustainable development, there appeared a necessity to make all the levels of society related to it, defining its role and the way all the players of the society can contribute to its implementation. This circumstance is not external to the university and goes beyond life on the university campus, encouraging all the interested parties (first of all, students, professors and heads) to go beyond the university walls and interact with the surrounding social realias, giving the priority to the transform of the urban environment.

Thus, a university being a social facility of the highest standard (Crow and Dabars, 2015) comes alive thanks to society’s participation and expresses its responsibility for contributing to building more rightful and supporting communes declaring itself to be a key participant of the territory and its citizens’ development. Such a perspective on a university is a clear driving force for enhancing its reputation, allowing it to show its social function and its influence on the interested parties which can lead to receiving tangible and intangible benefits contributing to its sustainable development.

According to some authors, out of the five most important factors defining regional development:

1. individual enterprise,
2. innovations in business,
3. citizens' education,
4. scientific research,
5. knowledge and technology transfer,

four generally depend on the quality of higher education and research institutions located in this region.

Another peculiarity of the university which understands that sustainability is of crucial importance for its development is an ability to adjust regularly its teaching and opportunities of its academic community to solve the real problems and tasks of the organisations which it interacts with. In this range of ideas, innovative teaching methods and techniques, which allow professors and students to interact more actively in solving this task, become especially up-to-date.