How accreditation agencies can help the necessary change of HEI´s towards sustainable development practices

In our society, everybody seems concerned by Sustainable Development, however when you discuss with European students, you realise that in many institutions, there is not much done and that for the time being it is always the same European universities that behave as “good students” and answer surveys and enquiries; it is necessary to find a way to make things evolve everywhere! Accreditation agencies are one of the solutions to improve the involvement of all the HEI. The CTI (Commission des Titres d´Ingénieur) is in France the body in charge of authorizing engineering universities the right to deliver the title of engineer. It states its own accreditation criteria that can evolve according to CTI´s own ongoing reflexion or to the point of view of its stakeholders, as required by ENQA. Regarding social responsibility and sustainable development, CTI consulted for 3 years organisations directly concerned by Sustainable development and defined in February 2014 the items that must appear in HEI´s self evaluation reports for their accreditation.