Text mining on green policies for integrating sustainability in higher education

Abstract

Green transition calls for a supply chain rethinking, considering the vulnerability of the environment and the effects of human activities on it. Education can push towards development of new growth models oriented towards sustainability. However, the identification of the key skills and competences for updating higher education offer is not a trivial task. Policies and regulations in employment focused on skills and mindset for sustainability can feed this process. Moreover, the pace and the complexity of the transition require trusted and integrated data sources to properly update educational offer for the emerging needs. A Natural Language Processing approach is thus presented to measure the alignment between policy-documents and to integrate and operationalize their content. Two European policies recently released are compared, namely the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities (EU-TSA) and the Green Concepts of the European Classification of Skills/Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO). The results show the topics to include in the development of educational activities oriented to sustainability, that are the key enabling competencies, and the key disciplines in which priority action should be taken. The insights can therefore guide higher educational providers in curriculum development both for pedagogical aspects and learning tasks.