Evaluation of Pollution Prevention Focus in Environmental Engineering Undergraduate Education

• Main Author: Emrah ÖZTÜRK
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bülent Ecevit University 2018-12-01
• Series: Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi
• Subjects: Pollution prevention; Environmental engineering; Education; Multi criteria analysis
• Online Access: http://higheredu-sci.beun.edu.tr/pdf.php3?id=1849

Nowadays protection of the environment and natural resources as a whole has become very important. Consequently, environmental policies and regulations of countries focused on pollution prevention strategies. However, specialists in the related fields with technical knowledge and accumulation are needed in order to apply the pollution prevention approaches. In order to meet this requirement, education issues based on the pollution prevention approach should be included in the undergraduate programs of universities. Environmental engineering is one of the most appropriate engineering branches in this field to handle the issues completely. Therefore, the courses focused on pollution prevention are needed more in environmental engineering education. In this study, the course catalogs and course contents of the environmental engineering departments at 46 universities in our country have been examined in detail and total 180 undergraduate courses were evaluated by employing multiple criterion analysis (MCA) in terms of pollution prevention contents. According to the obtained results, although the pollution prevention based approaches were among the aims of environmental engineering education, average 1.8% of 180 undergraduate courses were pollution prevention focused. Besides, 11% of the environmental engineering undergraduate courses contributed to pollution prevention and 5% were completely pollution prevention oriented. In addition, suggestions were presented about environmental engineering undergraduate education such as meeting existing needs, contributing to the sustainable development of our country, protection of our environment and natural resources and increasing employment opportunities.