SUSTAINABILITY AND PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE GREEK HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

During the last decade a continuous trend is observed, almost in all Greek Higher Education Institutions, toward the inclusion of courses and research programs related with the protection of the environment and the promotion of the sustainable development.
The Universities, the Technical Universities and the Technological Institutions in their Engineering and Economic Departments formulate various schemes of courses. The percentage of the time devoted to environment and sustainability is not enough in those courses.
In my paper I am going to examine the whole system of the Higher Education and point out the evolution of teaching and research on subjects strongly oriented to sustainable development. My main task will be to find the positive and the negative characteristics of the system and give the main guidelines in order to improve the quality and increase the time of environmental education in the curriculums of the Institutions. In this connection I will try to compare the status of the environmental education in Greece with the existing systems in other European countries.
As far as the methodology is concerned, I will collect all available data, then evaluate them and make some interviews with professors of the courses under consideration. The combination of the statistical approach and the quantitative evaluation I think that will give an important aspect of the present situation and simultaneously will help my effort to mention some ideas, which will improve the environmental education in the future.