CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF THE UNIVERSITY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the sustainable development of some of the world leading universities in order to identify the best practices and adapt them to the Ukrainian context. The growing popularity of the sustainable development concept in the world practice stipulates the necessity to study the possibilities of its application in higher education in Ukraine. Nowadays, higher education institutions are not just a place for obtaining knowledge and competencies, they are the centres for accumulating the country intellectual capital; they are the research and training hubs; they are the agents of sustainable changes in society. The results of the analysis of the best practices of sustainable development in the world leading universities are presented in the article. The authors selected higher education institutions for analysis based on The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. The top-50 leaders of this rating in 2022 were taken for analysis, they were grouped according to their geographical location. The main method of the study is comparative analysis. The study demonstrated that sustainable development, through achieving the goals of Sustainable Development is ensured by: academic component (Bachelor's and Master's programmes on sustainability), research component (research projects aimed at solving environmental, social, economic problems related to ensuring sustainable development), educational component (public lectures, conferences, events, workshops on familiarizing the public with the concept of Sustainable Development), economic component (creation of "green" campuses) and social component (support for students from socially vulnerable segments of the population, support of refugees, people with certain types of disabilities, the elderly, the female and providing humanitarian assistance to victims of natural disasters or wars, etc.). The article offers the authors' conceptual model of sustainable university development that consists of the following blocks: sustainable teaching, sustainable research, sustainable campus and sustainable partnership. In conclusion, the authors of the article introduced an assumption about the possibility of applying the authors' model at the stage of post-war restoration of higher educational institutions in Ukraine.