Educational Alternatives, Volume 22, 2024

Резюме: Higher education plays an important role in sustainable development. Universities across the globe have the potential to significantly contribute to progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by implementing sustainability practices on their campuses and through their educational programmes. Concerning this and against the background of a constantly declining number of students in Bulgaria, this paper seeks to analyse the Bulgarian higher education institutions’ role in promoting sustainable development. It argues that most of the existing bachelor’s and master’s programmesintended to be related to sustainable development, are not clearly associated with the SDGs and taught in Bulgarian language only, which hinders the opportunities for both the achievement of the Global goals and for the improvement of the country’s higher education system. The paper therefore concludes that an adequate approach for Bulgarian universities to properly promote sustainable development is through launching international programmes targeting both Bulgarian and foreign students as well as through incorporating the SDGs into most disciplines.