Vice President, University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany

Prof. Dr. Christian Schrader

Vice President, University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany

Speech, held at the 6th World Environmental Education Congress in Brisbane, Australia, 21st July 2011

Descriptors: environmental sustainability Germany university Umwelt Nachhaltigkeit Deutschland Universität Hochschule

Gaps between environmental Research, Education and Policy at German Universities

Germans have to live with someprejudices: They build good cars, but they take everything too serious. And Germans are famous about their fear of environmental disaster (German Angst). Germany is one of the heartlands of industrialization with all effects to the environment.In the 1970s and 1980s a strong environmental movement came up.For some years the Germans felt like being world champions of environmental protection.

All of this influenced the educational system of Germany. Since the 1980s a new generation grew up, which soaked environmental protection with mother’s milk – and who think about how much PCB might be in it. This generation has arrived at the places of higher education. In 1999 a guide to academic environmental teaching listed 501 environmental related study possibilities.[i]

Here, a bit tired of all the environmental fears, the environmental generation was confronted with a change of the leading discourse. With the Rio Conference on Environment and Development 1992[ii] the idea of sustainable development came up,[iii] followed by concerns about climate change and global warming. It changed the conservation focus to a more development- and competency-oriented focus at the academic level.[iv]

Chapter 36 of the Rio Agenda 21 set out broad proposals for promoting education, public awareness and training. Although higher education is far from being in the center of the deliberations,[v] chapter 36 shows the will to see education as a key element for sustainable development. In the follow-up process numerous international and European commitments[vi] culminated in a UN Decision of 2002 to have an international decade of education for sustainable development from 2005 to 2014.[vii]

Because of its economic and academic capabilities, Germany has the potential and a responsibility to education for sustainable development.[viii] In 2009 the Federal Ministry of Education and Research submitted a report about education for sustainable development[ix] and listed its efforts for research in this field.[x] However, the competence for university policy lies with the federal states (Länder). Only two of the sixteen federal states did introduce sustainability in the task-lists of their higher education acts[xi] and they did not provide their universities with financial programs towards sustainability. So the German discourse about universities and sustainability was not led top down by the education governments.
It was led by declarations of frontrunner universities.[xii] Some of them came together in different networks, for example after signing the Copernicus Charta of the Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences.[xiii] In 2011 a network of nine student sustainability initiatives published a paper of postulations “For a university landscape in sustainable development”.[xiv] Finally, in 2010 the German Rector´s Conference issued together with the German UNESCO Committee a paper “Universities for sustainable development”.[xv]

From a legal view, all of these papers are political declarations, not a binding obligation. They offer proposals, not more. This open character might hit the right point. Sustainability can´t be commanded.[xvi] The concept of sustainable development is not a single or a static approach. It describes a change process of social, economic and ecologic systems with great interdependencies and complexity. This challenge relates to the role of universities as important institutions to improve the knowledge of today´s urgent problems. The research capacity is important to generate new knowledge about understanding the problem and formulating ways to solutions. The teaching in the tertiary sector must play a leading role for an enhanced consciousness and to enable students to recognise and promote responsible solutions. Universities can be role models for practical examples of sustainable development on the local and regional level.[xvii] German universities have a high degree of freedom on how to organize themselves. They can commit themselves to sustainability, if they have the capacity to do so.

However, in the last decades the German system of higher education had to face three major developments:

1. The number and the structure of the universities evolved: We have currently 105 classical, public universities. Additionally, 211 Universities of Applied Sciences came up.[xviii]And, in the last ten years, a sector of 92 private-run universities grew up. Apart from the universities, some huge research organisations exist.
2. The higher education policy changed the inner constitution of the universities to enhance their ability to compete with other universities. Based on the management of a private company, the role and the power of the presidencies were strengthened. Universities were asked to find specific profiles, laid down in mission statements to lead the further development of research fields or teaching programs.
3. All German universities had to reinvent themselves within the Bologna-process. In 1999 the European science ministers signed in Bologna, Italy, a declaration to form a European Higher Education Area until 2010. The goals are to organize higher education systems in European countries in such a way that it is easy to move from one country to the other; to foster the employability of graduates and to increase the attractiveness of European higher education. As a result, the traditional German degrees had to change to a bachelor/master-dualism and the curricula had to change from the accumulation of knowledge to the output-orientated acquirement of competences.

Driven by these political programs the universities were more than busy to reorganize their inner constitution, their teaching programs and their role in a new environment dominated by competition. The influence of education for sustainable development is visible, but, up to now, it is marginal and remained relatively small.

Within this framework there are some facts indicating success in research, in teaching programs and in the administration of higher education in Germany.

1. Research

Public and commercial expenses for research and development rose in 2009 to 66,7 billion euros (2,78 percent of the GDP).[xix] However, only 17 percent of the expenses for research and development go to the universities. Research often happens in other institutions besides the universities.

67 percent of the overall expenses were spent in research departments of the industry.[xx] This means that two third of the research expenses are done in commercial interests which are usually profit and technology orientated and not in the long term and public use of sustainable development. Even public funding often follows this imperative of immediate use in a certain technology: In the German state Hessia the target agreements (Zielvereinbarungen) for university funding until 2015 had under the chapter sustainability only the subchapters support of electromobility and a regional centre of mobility.

Due to the competition policy the universities are more and more dependent on third-party expenses. Research with the money and in the interest of a third party gets often a striking role for the existence of university institutes. Third parties often tend to privatize the research benefit for themselves. Confidential clauses dominate this sector instead of migrating of the findings to teaching or to the public.

Within the public expenses, the environmental research receives 3,4 % (OECD-states: 2,3%). In 2004, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research launched a framework program of research for sustainable development (FONA).[xxi] It aims at research and dissemination of innovations in certain fields of action like Industry and commerce, regions, use of resources or strategies for actions in society. For research on sustainability new methodological approaches are necessary, away from specialized units, towards trans- or interdisciplinary institutions. These structures are growing.[xxii] More than 100 research institutions exist at universities; some have founded specific SD-research centers.[xxiii]But it still prevails research in specialized units.[xxiv] Research into sustainability is still far away from becoming the scientific mainstream.[xxv]

In a recent inventory of the German science system Schneidewind resumes that a patchwork shows the picture of research in sustainable development in Germany.[xxvi]

1. Teaching programs

By numbers the German higher education shows impressive actions.

In 2005 the German Commission for UNESCO defined a national Plan of Action embedding the idea of sustainable development in all areas of education.[xxvii] In 2009, the "World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development – Moving into the Second Half of the UN Decade" was held in Bonn, Germany, and gave new impulses within its declaration.[xxviii] Nearly 800 official German projects of the UN Decade came up.[xxix]

More than 300 academic programs came into existence in the context of environment or sustainable development.[xxx] 14 % are courses with relations to themes of sustainnable development, 54 percent of them are teaching programs that focus on sustainability. In more than 30 percent the whole academic program is dedicated to sustainability. Sorted by disciplines, most of the programs (47 percent) are in engineering sciences.[xxxi] In the last years networks between some universities came up, for example to exchange concepts[xxxii] or to run common e-learning courses.[xxxiii]

In the last decades programs came up that were specialized on environmental aspects. Environmental engineering, environmental economics or environmental communication, were designed under the rational approach of modern sciences: To select one highly specialized aspect for deeper research and for teaching in this narrow field. As a result there are specialized scientists, engineers and other academics, but not necessarily environmentalists. Some academics realize the links to environmental affairs, but not to sustainable development.

Teaching sustainable development leads away from the scientific direction of specialization and separation into scientific disciplines. The already complex structure of environmental science is too simple when compared to the newer approaches of sustainable development or climate protection. Within sustainable development we have to think about environmental justice between developed and developing states and we have economic and social pillars beside the ecologic pillar.

As a result of this complexity the leading goal can´t be to disseminate knowledge to the students. Learning sustainable development demands new designs of academic teaching. Sustainable development is a process of understanding global correlations und to find ways for a sustainable design of the future. Key elements of this shaping competence for a design of the future (Gestaltungskompetenz) are: Anticipation, cooperation, interdisciplinary work, dealing with incomplete or very complex information, goal conflicts, participation, reflection about own and foreign backgrounds, self-dependent acting and empathy.[xxxiv] Academic knowledge must join together with communicative competences to create participative decision-making and conflict-solving processes.[xxxv]

The didactics at universities must be adequate to these competency goals. We know a lot of best practice examples, where students learn in interdisciplinary projects, on practical problems or with new media. Yet in reality a reading still prevails where the expert of a certain discipline recites abstract contents. In the reform of the curricula in the Bologna-processeach professor aimed to find his specific course in an unchanged shape. An addition of individual interests led to hundreds of curricula where even basic elements of didactics in higher education were not regarded, without even exploring the didactics of sustainable development.

Most German universities do not work systematically on how to integrate sustainable development into their programs. The existing efforts play a marginal role,[xxxvi] they are small islands in the ocean of German academia.[xxxvii]

1. Running of universities

The running of universities demonstrates internal working practices to the students. Students do not only learn by attending the courses. The university is the place where young people, eager to learn and open to learn, live for some years. If they want to or not: the university will socialize them in the one or the other way. If universities see the importance of this non formal learning process and try to fill it consciously with elements of a sustainable university life,[xxxviii] then students will take a sustainable running of an institution as an option to their future working places and act in the same direction.

There are some possible levels to integrate the demands of sustainability in their practical operations in a comprehensive way:

The existing legal provisions on occupational safety, on work with hazardous chemicals, on sewage and waste management and so on mostly did not integrate the requirements of sustainable development. To perform with legal provisions is no sign for sustainability.

As a second level a university can commit itself to additional measures. Certainly, any university does this in some way. Some work on a healthy food in the cafeterias or dining halls, some want to reduce their CO2-emission, some use only recycling paper and so on. It is mainstream in German institutions to have one or more single measures of this kind.[xxxix] At some universities greening-the-university initiative by students exists.[xl] But again, in the sum it gives no sustainability program. And there are no widely accepted indicators to compare universities among themselves.[xli]

In a third level, a university might use a management tool. In the business world the use of the quality standard scheme of ISO 9000 is widely spread. Some specifications of ISO 9000 are more targeted to elements of sustainability, for example occupational safety management schemes[xlii] or environmental management systems[xliii]. Based on this, the European Union´s environmental management scheme EMAS[xliv] contains additional steps.

In the last few years, other institutions came up with sustainability management efforts. Most German business companies started to work with sustainability reports or made statements about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Corporate social responsibility is a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. Through CSR, enterprises can help to reconcile economic, social and environmental ambitions beyond minimum legal requirements.[xlv] Since 2010 CSR is underlined with an international standard in ISO 26 000:2010 Guidance for social responsibility.

A recent survey shows that out of 400 German universities 69 have approaches for occupational safety and for environment, but not for sustainability.[xlvi] Only seven of the 400 German universities are registered by EMAS.[xlvii] And only very few integrate formal management schemes beyond the sector of administrative processes. A deep mistrust and internal resistance exists against using a tool developed for businesses within a scientific institution.[xlviii]

Another criteria for institutional sustainability is whether the mission statement of an institution contains the word sustainable development or elements of it. A 2010 study showed that 59 % of all universities[xlix] had published a mission statement. It criticized that most of these statements were meaningless and exchangeable. Only one fourth of them contained statements about sustainability or environmental protection.[l] Within the group of private universities only 15 % (14 of the 92) are dedicated to sustainability, according to their mission statements and websites.

For most of the German universities sustainability is no a goal worth to mention.

1. Conclusions

There is no lack of political declarations that sustainability is a part of higher education. But even the UN decade was not widely regarded in German universities.

A few universities used sustainable development as a leading element for their profile. The university of applied sciences in Eberswalde even changed its name into University of Sustainable Development.[li] But this is a single case. A “paradigmatic change is still missing”[lii] in Germany. Most universities do not have “a comprehensive orientation towards the guideline of sustainability and the integration of the specified principles of research, teaching and services in Education for Sustainable Development”, as recommended by the German Rectors’ Conference.[liii]

Why is the outlook optimistic?

Networking seems to be the most sought method to spread the idea of sustainability to other universities. In Germany there is a network of universities of applied sciences and a Working Group Universities (AG Hochschulen) of the UN-Decade,[liv] in Europe we have the Copernicus Alliance.[lv]The perspective of networking seems limited. Some networks are below ten members, and always the same five leading universities appear in all activities. This shows that the most universities work internally and are not interested in active collaboration. It is doubtful whether the idea of organizing a benchmarking process[lvi] will find more acceptance. The business-orientated management systems did not find their way into the universities. If sustainability efforts remain voluntarily, it seems to be a better way to develop indicators that will help each university to compare and to find its way in its own efforts.

Perhaps it will help to go from non-binding to more committing approaches. In in the last few years German university laws filled the task lists of universities. How these tasks can be achieved is not regulated but falls within the autonomy of each university. It wouldn´t cost much to add a contribution to sustainable development to this list in more than two of sixteen German Länder. It might stimulate an innovative race on how sustainable development can be supported in and by higher education.

The Bologna-process is open for sustainability. The 2005 Bologna follow-up conference held in Bergenstated that “our contribution to achieving education for all should be based on the principle of sustainable development“.[lvii]The Bologna process demands to find adequate descriptions of competencies, of interdisciplinary settings, of international cooperation and of integrating new media.[lviii]If the Germans do not only formally change their curricula into Bologna-conform modules and grades they may discover that the most important knowledge, competences and values for future decision-makers are lying within the field of sustainable development.

Curricula development will follow the existing best-practice models to integrate interdisciplinary, international and practical aspects. To enhance this, the actual decision-makers within the universities have to be confronted with the need of sustainability. All future appointments should be made on the basis of whether the applicant has experience in interdisciplinary work and aspects of sustainability. It is only a few years ago that German universities required skills in English language because the internationalization became a major subject. Now sustainability must follow as a general requirement for all future appointments. The abilities of the existing staff may be developed to be specific continuing training and professional development.