An overview of environmental engineering education in the past decade: a global perspective

Environmental engineering education has been the focus of much attention in recent years. In the past, environmental engineering, more commonly known then as sanitary or public-health engineering, was taught as a subject within the civil engineering curriculum. As time progressed, and with it the realisation of the significance of the new field in engineering environmental engineering it began to evolve into a discipline with its own identity and merits. An overview of environmental engineering education in the past decade is presented in this paper to determine how the higher education institutions from both developed and developing countries have responded to global environmental challenges through their education and curricula. The authors were particularly interested in discovering the solutions or processes developed by institutions, to bring environmental engineering education to the forefront. The endeavour in this study was to report on the methods and approaches, problems and challenges that higher educational institutions face in implementing the discipline.