DOES THE SPANISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM TEACH SUSTAINABILITY? PERCEPTION OF THE STUDENTS OF FOUR UNIVERSITIES

For more than a decade, various national and international initiatives have emerged so that universities can assume a leadership role in order to promote education for sustainable development and to respond to the global challenges of today's society. It is necessary to analyze the effectiveness of these initiatives, and to ask ourselves whether or not universities are training their students to face these challenges with responsibility. This is one of the objectives of the EDINSOST project. Within the framework of EDINSOST, we have carried out qualitative research, developing focus groups with students in their final years at different universities and different academic profiles. This has allowed us to integrate the perspective of university students into our analysis. In this paper, we present the most relevant contributions in relation to the students' vision of sustainability, their formative experience in the university and their opinion on how it could be improved. Results show that the sustainability training provided by university is insufficient: students do not feel prepared to integrate sustainability into their professional activity. However, they consider it essential that universities should include sustainability in their academic curricula, and they emphasize the importance of using active methodologies that connect students with reality and encourage reflection. The research shows that there is a lot of work to be done in order to integrate sustainability into university education. Students' proposals are aligned with those of experts in education for sustainability. To carry them out requires both teacher training and commitment, as well as institutional involvement.