A study on higher education institutions in environment education

Knowledge about environment, especially its holistic nature and the laws that govern the ongoing processes in the environment, needs to be provided through formal and non-formal environment education. The importance of extending EE to college students on the threshold of becoming active participants in society as citizens, teachers, decision-makers and leaders, has resulted in the Supreme Court ruling on introducing courses on Environment at all levels of higher education, and the University Grants Commission's subsequent recommendation to all universities to introduce a compulsory foundation course at the undergraduate level. The present paper throughs light on the importance of environment education and the strategies to be adopted for environment education development. The research paper analyses the impact of environment education in higher educational institutions with the purpose to

understand the awareness level of the students with respect to the complexities in environment

Review the development strategies of environment education.

Thus the primary data was collected through structured questionnaires from 500 respondents i.e. students from undergraduate and professional courses, were tabulated and analysed with the help of chi-square tests. The results revealed that there is need for curriculum renewal, implementation of innovative teaching/evaluation methods. It was felt that the students should have opportunities for empirical investigations in the environment for observation, measuring, recording, interpreting and discussing about what has been observed. At the same time Environment education should help the student to understand the personal responsibility for the environment and the concept of stewardship. Thus there is a major responsibility for environment education in general and more so ever for higher education as they are the producers of future decision makers.