Abstract:

United Nations members adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals based on the environmental, social and economic dimensions. This paper focuses on SDG 4 related to "quality education" in universities, which play a key role. The aim of the paper is to show the ‘state of the art’ regarding the implementation of the SDGs in higher education to establish which are the most studied topics. For this purpose, a mixed methodology was used. First, a co-occurrence analysis was carried out using the VOSviewer bibliometric software. The results established 5 clusters called "higher education", "2030 Agenda", "SDGs", "quality education" and "education for sustainable development". Secondly, a literature review has performed, considering the most cited articles during the years 2020 and 2021, a period in which the number of publications has increased considerably. Examining the main contributions and limitations of the most influential articles. It is important to embed the philosophy of the SDGs in the higher education system in all its aspects, bearing in mind environmental but also social aspects, with the aim of training the future SDGs performers.

Keywords:

Sustainable Development Goals, higher education, research agenda, bibliometric analysis, SDG 4.