A general method of analyzing the correlation between sustainability and curriculum of higher education in China

Abstract

With the increasing awareness of sustainable development in higher education institutions, it has become an essential part for setting training program and curriculum. The key step is how to integrate sustainable development requirements into professional courses among college students education to make the theoretical groundwork possible in all disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic approach through top-bottom to integrate sustainability contents into curriculum as well as quantifying influence degree of different courses on sustainable development. It mainly takes the training program setting of higher education institutions as the research object, and analyzes the relevance of training goals, graduation requirements, core courses, curriculum system and sustainability factors. Taking general education courses, subject basic courses, professional courses and optional courses as examples, the relevance between sustainable factors and curriculum design is quantified combining qualitative and quantitative analysis method for providing valuable reference for decision makers. All majors of University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST) are analyzed through considering whether or not containing sustainability factors like environment, society and economy. The data are collected from the training program of all majors in USST. Furthermore, the major of mechanical design, manufacturing and automation in USST is used as a case study to reveal the importance of integrated sustainable factors, and the significance of higher education of engineering specialty for the implementation of sustainable development.