Sustainable Development Goals will guide the global development agenda for the coming years. Under this premise, this article explores the role which higher education (HE) has been assigned in contributing to sustainable human development, and concludes that the vision of HE offered is too narrow and unable to capture the essence and full meaning of sustainable human development. Moving away from problematic indicators and thresholds that understand HE as a producer of human capital, the article proposes placing the concept of human development at the centre of HE. Particularly, the article argues that its main elements (its normative approach, the idea of capability, functioning and agency) can provide a valuable and sound footing for a more transformative institution.

This article explores how three different learning spaces could be appropriate for developing a sense of global citizenship among university students. We draw on an interview study conducted at the Universitat Politècnica of Valencia (UPV) between 2010 and 2012. The spaces analyzed were two electives devoted to international cooperation, a mobility program that took place mainly in Latin American countries and a student-led university group. We examined the three spaces in terms of expansion of capabilities and agency related to global citizenship and cosmopolitanism using a conceptual framework that synthesizes Nussbaum’s and Sen’s capability approach with Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanism to explore the limits and potentialities of those three spaces. Although the exploratory character of our study cannot allow us to generalize our findings, what we can affirm is each of these areas has the potentiality to enhance global citizenship but with nuances, differences, and complementarities. The electives appear to be good spaces for the critical learning capability, while international mobility (Meridies) is a strong enabler for narrative imagination capabilities. Students belonging to Mueve (student led group) showed elements of these capabilities plus a very strong emphasis on agency, which does not occur in the other two learning spaces. Critical cosmopolitan process happened both in Mueve and Meridies. In the student-led group, this cosmopolitan process begins with the local, while in the internships it was the global encounter that initiates a cosmopolitan reflection.

University quality and its measurement have been strongly on the agenda of university policy since the 1980s. There is no consensus about what a good university is, but increasingly priority has been given to a narrow focus on contribution to supporting economic production and growth, as part of an economy-centred and market-centred conception of society. We argue that a human development approach is also very often relevant in educational policy and evaluation and can assist us to define and characterize a good university. From the following core values of human development—well-being, participation and empowerment, equity and diversity, and sustainability—we propose a list of dimensions for a human development orientation in research, teaching, social engagement and university governance, and then discuss the implications of these values and how they can be used in evaluation and steering of universities' work.

This paper is closed access until 3rd July 2018.Higher Education Institutions play a critical role in societies transition towards sustainable development, educating future professionals and decision makers. In the last few decades, a number of technical universities have devoted major efforts to integrating sustainable development into engineering curricula. There is still, however, an increasing need to further transform learning and training environments and build capacity of educators and trainers on sustainable development issues.\ud \ud Against this background, this paper assesses the role of online training courses, within continuing professional development strategies, in promoting sustainable human development in engineering degrees. It was built upon the implementation of a European initiative, the Global Dimension in Engineering Education, promoted by a transdisciplinary consortium of technical universities and non-governmental organisations.\ud \ud In terms of method, this study analyses two sets of quantitative and qualitative indicators to assess i) the perceived quality/relevance of the training proposals, and ii) the learning acquisition of participants. Quantitative indicators were complemented by a descriptive analysis of findings from a semi-structured survey. The results provide evidence that online learning can be an effective approach for continuing professional development of academics. The findings also suggest that participants perceived online courses’ contents and curricula, developed jointly by academics and practitioners of non-governmental organisations, as relevant and useful for integrating sustainability principles in teaching activities. To conclude, authors recommend the leaders of higher educational institutions to explore the integration of online courses addressed to faculty into university policy and strategies, as a way to promote professional development and the engagement of academics on sustainable development

This paper analyses four renewable energy-based electrification projects that were implemented by the non-governmental organization Practical Action in the rural area of Cajamarca, Peru. Using the capability approach, the research examines the effect of the projects on the things people value. It confirms that projects provide different benefits to the communities (reducing air pollution caused by candles and kerosene, improving access to communication through television and radio, providing the possibility of night study under appropriate light, etc.), but also detects an expansion of the capabilities in other areas not considered by the non-governmental organization such as those related to religion, leisure or community participation. However, the expansion of capabilities is different for men and women. The study reveals the limitations of interventions designed to supply technology, electrification in this particular case, which do not take into account certain elements that can make the use of technology contribute unequally to the expansion of people's capabilities. The paper concludes that technological projects can generate inequalities, and some recommendations are presented in order to address these issues when planning interventions.