Desde hace más de una década, existen diversas iniciativas internacionales y nacionales para que las universidades asuman un rol de liderazgo para promover una educación para el desarrollo sostenible y dar respuestas a los retos globales de la sociedad actual. Es preciso analizar la efectividad de esas iniciativas y preguntarnos si las universidades están formando a sus estudiantes para afrontar con responsabilidad dichos retos.Éste es uno de los objetivos del proyecto EDINSOST, dentro de cuyo marco hemos llevado a cabo una investigación de tipo cualitativa, desarrollando grupos de discusión con estudiantes de últimos cursos de distintas universidades y perfiles académicos. Esto nos ha permitido integrar en nuestros análisis la perspectiva del alumnado universitario.En este artículo se presentan las aportaciones más relevantes en relación a la visión de los estudiantes sobre la sostenibilidad, su experiencia formativa en la universidad y su opinión sobre cómo podría mejorarse. Los resultados muestran que la formación en sostenibilidad que aporta la universidad es insuficiente, y que los estudiantes no se sienten preparados para integrar la sostenibilidad en su actividad profesional. Sin embargo, consideran fundamental que la universidad incluya la sostenibilidad en sus currículos académicos, y enfatizan la importancia de emplear metodologías activas que conecten al alumnado con la realidad y fomenten la reflexión.La investigación muestra que queda mucho trabajo por hacer para integrar la sostenibilidad en la formación universitaria. Las propuestas del alumnado están alineadas con las de los expertos en educación para la sostenibilidad, y para llevarlas a cabo se requiere tanto la formación y compromiso del profesorado como la implicación institucional.

University-industry links and their impact on innovation processes have been widely acknowledged. However, previous studies have mainly examined university-industry knowledge transfer activities from the perspective of the research and third stream missions. This paper goes a step further, analysing such processes from the perspective of the university’s teaching mission. More specifically, it explores how educational crowdsourcing platforms help bring universities and industry together to develop joint activities in undergraduate and graduate programmes. Nine platforms with different business models were examined. A qualitative exploratory approach was adopted to manually collect and analyse data from the platforms. This study identified three categories of educational crowdsourcing platforms based on their focus (education, crowdsourcing or networking). The analysis shows that, although these platforms have some shortcomings, they provide benefits to all stakeholders by facilitating experiential learning, promoting skills acquisition and encouraging the development of new ideas to meet industry needs.

This study presents a sustainability competencies map (SCM) for Business Administration and Management (BAM) disciplines as a tool to support education in sustainability at the university level. The study describes in detail the design and elaboration of the map based on the competencies defined by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) and complemented with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) adopted by the United Nations. In addition, to externally evaluate the proposed SCM, we conducted a series of interviews with top managers and founders of five organizations that vary in size and industry. As the main contribution, the SCM for BAM studies is presented, containing 58 learning objectives. The qualitative research framework performed to obtain evidence from the interviewees showed that the holistic dimension of the proposed SCM is highly valued by the interviewed practitioners. Additionally, the SCM’s division of competencies into three levels of achievement was considered practical and helpful to measure them. Finally, the interviewees expressed concerns regarding the implementation of the SCM in real classroom, calling for the necessity of special training for teachers and flexibility of higher education system. Reinforced by the interviewees’ opinions, we believe that the SCM for BAM education presented here will facilitate the design of different methodologies by the teaching staff to guide students towards compliance with the 17 SDGs in 2030.

Many attempts have been conducted during the last decades to define a quality measurement scale in the health sector; however, there is not yet a complete agreement on which dimensions impact satisfaction. Besides, a quality scale encompassing all patient concerns related to his/her hospitalisation is still lacking. In this context, the purpose of this study is three aimed: (i) defining a scale (HospQual) to assess patients’ perceived quality of hospital service; (ii) analysing the impact of perceived quality on patient satisfaction; and (iii) analysing the mediation role of fulfilment of patients’ expectations between quality and satisfaction. To capture data regarding Catalan patients’ perceived quality of hospital service, two surveys were launched: the first collected 200 questionnaires in June 2016, and the second collected 601 questionnaires in December 2016. An array of exploratory factor analyses was carried out with the first sample to establish the HospQual scale dimensions, which showed appropriate psychometric characteristics. The second sample was used for confirmatory purposes and also to analyse the research model analysis addressed to determine the mediating role of fulfilment of expectations. Findings confirmed HospQual dimensions impact satisfaction. Additionally, fulfilment of expectations is proved to be a mediator between quality and satisfaction.