Main Content

Sustainability in teaching

In teaching, the area of sustainability are anchored in the Bachelor's degree programme "Sustainability: Economy and Geography" as well as in the Master's degree programme "Sustainable Development". Both programmes are based on cooperation with the School of Geography. 

Both programmes combine the knowledge of sustainability problems from other departments with solutions from the economic sciences. In the opinion of the department, the instruments of economics are very well suited for developing solutions to the issue of sustainability (also with recourse to knowledge located in other disciplines), because economics traditionally deals with conflicting goals and the resulting scarcity of resources and the optimal handling of them. One example of this is the instrument of certificate trading, which was developed out of economics and is very relevant in practice today.

For this reason, the connection of other subject areas with economics via the structure "problem knowledge/solution" provides students with a competence profile that contains significantly more than just the sum of the competences of the isolated subjects. At this point, the degree programme distinguishes itself from other programmes in which sustainability is only dealt with or economic sustainability solutions are neglected.

Moreover, the sustainability professorships are already exerting a pull on existing professorships: Some professorships are adapting their existing teaching programmes so that even in regular courses, an average of two double hours are devoted to sustainability topics.