Conceptualizing Higher Education for Sustainable Human Development

Abstract

This paper explores how higher education can be pursued for and as a sustainable human development process. It emphasizes the rationale behind opting for the capability approach as a framework of analysis of educational equality, social justice, and policies and pedagogies conducive to sustained agency and flourishing. The paper contributes to the construction of an argumentation line, within the education policy discourse for a capability approach to the formulation of the aims and evaluation of higher education policy. The prism of sustainable human development and social justice outlining why and how the capability approach offers a solid framework for evaluating social justice and education policies through the lenses of human development. The substation of the framework for the approaching of higher education as for sustainable human development goes through the consideration of the roles of education, the consideration of educational equality, consideration of the nature of higher education capabilities and the dimensions of sustainable human development in higher education, and finally through the consideration of the methodological and conceptual foundations that affirm the capability approach as a superior framework.