Abstract
With the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) nearing its end and evaluation of its achievements underway, this chapter looks very preliminarily at what the ESD state of affairs is in the field of higher education in Central Europe. A specific historical context has resulted in very different conditions for the implementation of ESD at the HE level in West versus East European countries.
HE institutions in the Eastern countries of Central Europe over the past quarter century have faced multiple challenges associated with the transition to a post-socialist society: liberalization, the transformation to a market economy, the growing numbers of students, and deep systemic changes related to the Bologna Process, and inclusion within the European Higher Education Area. This chapter demonstrates the main principles of the SD -oriented HE transition and the trends in this field over the past 23 years as part of a comparative analysis of post-socialist Central European countries; it focuses on sustainability changes in HE and identifies similar trends in relation to the recent shared history of the region.
It analyses obstacles to SD, especially as a consequence of the incremental evolution of the role of authority, ongoing communication patterns (related to interdisciplinary or multi-stakeholder perspectives) and the perception of quality in HE which is assessed by standardized criteria and governed by the state.