Sustainable construction in Turkish higher education context

Abstract

As the construction industry is one of the dominant contributors to the world's total CO2 emissions and it has huge negative impacts on the environment, sustainable construction has become a key aspiration in the field. Through utilizing eco-friendly design and resource efficiency, sustainable construction is considered as the main concept to create and operate a healthy built environment. Although sustainability has been demonstrated as a timeless objective for continuous development in Turkey's governmental policies, the number of qualified professionals in the field and the attributed significance to the notion of sustainability in the Turkish educational context is questionable. Accordingly, this paper concentrates on the Turkish architectural and civil engineering education-two disciplines that are expected to raise experts on the subject-within the scope of sustainable construction. Ten research universities, which are identified by the Higher Education Institute (YÖK), are analyzed in terms of the content of the curriculum and the conducted graduate studies in architecture and civil engineering departments. The main aim of this paper is to reveal the lack of sustainability-related graduate studies and sustainability-related content in the established curriculum of the higher education institutions in Turkey.