Abstract:

The approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the General Assembly of United Nations in 2015 has involved a turning point for society in general and the university community in particular. In this sense, the 17 goals in this Program involve a challenge for higher education institutions, which must be a key element in the transformation of the society. In this way, some of these institutions are developing and implementing actions aiming at covering a set of interconnected social and environmental problems, such as: ensuring healthy lives, ensuring inclusive and quality education, promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, contributing to full and productive employment and decent work for all, fostering innovation, reducing gender inequality, achieving food security, ensuring access to affordable and sustainable energy, ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, or adopting measures against climatic change and its impacts. Universitat de València, through the Vice-chancellorship of Equality, Diversity and Sustainability, has created the Sustainability Commission, with the aim to reinforce the implication of this institution with the SDG, through a deep analysis of these aims, understanding them as an opportunity for re-think how to improve its internal and external processes regarding people and the planet. Besides, the different centres that conform the Universitat of València have joined to this Program and are progressing in the development of activities oriented to cover the aims specified in the SDG, involving all the university community members (students, teaching staff and administrative staff). With all this, the present paper aims at analysing the perception that students have about the activities organised by the institution and if these actions can actually involve changes in students’ behaviour. Besides, it aims at analysing if these perceptions can vary depending on the students’ cultural background. To achieve these aims, we examine the perceptions of a group of students of the Facultat d'Economia of the Universitat de València.

Keywords:

Sustainable development, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), higher education.