How Accreditation Agencies can Help the Necessary Changes of HEIs Towards Sustainable Development Practices

Abstract

In our society, everybody seems concerned by sustainable development, however, when you discuss with European students, you realize that in many institutions, there is not much done and that for the time being it is always the same European universities that behave as "good students" and answer surveys and enquiries; it is necessary to find a way to make things evolve everywhere! Accreditation agencies are one of the solutions to improve the involvement of all the HEIs. The Commission des Titres d'Ingénieurs (CTI) is in France the body in charge of authorizing engineering universities the right to deliver the title of engineer. It states its own accreditation criteria that can evolve according to CTI's own ongoing reflexion or to the point of view of its stakeholders, as required by ENQA. Regarding social responsibility and SD CTI consulted for 3 years organisations directly concerned by SD and defined in February 2014 the item that must appear in HEI's self evaluation reports. Those points as well the demarche are presented in the paper