Addressing the Employability-Sustainability Gap: A Masterclass Case Study

Introduction

Progress made in embedding ethics, responsibility, and sustainability into universities’ curricula, research, and public engagement is argued here to be under-represented in curriculum career management. This ‘knowledge gap’ needs to be urgently addressed to develop explicit linkages between Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with career-building for environmental and social impact. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015 for “peace and prosperity for people and planet, now and into the future” (United Nations, undated) sets out 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are relevant to building careers for sustainable (social and environmental impact), through the development of desirable competencies. According to UNESCO (2017):

For education to be effective in developing the sustainability competencies required for graduates to become ‘change agents’ (Cook, 2020) and to be prepared for the burgeoning ‘green’ skills job market (LinkedIn, 2022), alongside broader sustainability job roles connected to social impact, then it follows that education should provide an integrated approach to sustainability and employability. There is, however, surprisingly little that addresses the university curriculum nexus of employability modules and sustainability-related modules. This suggests a missed opportunity to integrate core technical learning on sustainability content with an explicit and integrated application to personal and professional development as part of employability. This can limit impact at the individual level as students may, as a result, be less aware of or motivated towards relevant career opportunities, organizational outcomes for the university related to accreditations and other measurements, and global outcomes concerning the SDGs.

The perspective adopted throughout this chapter represents a shift from a neoclassical economic perspective that “students attend business school primarily to earn a large salary after graduation” to one in which “business schools also prepare learners with knowledge and skills that mitigate societal problems” (AACSB, 2023, p. 2). The Chartered Association of Business Schools (2021, p. 9) positions business schools as important contributors to the ‘public good’ in a context of increasing interest by students to pursue careers in social enterprise and purpose-led companies. Enabling students to pursue such careers builds student empowerment in their personal and professional lives. The premise of this chapter is that if students are not provided with a structure to make explicit links between formal curriculum learning relevant to the SDGs and related career opportunities, then the talent pipeline is constrained.

By embedding discipline-specific and sustainability-specific employability learning into the curriculum, all stakeholders in the university ecosystem can benefit. Transformational learning opportunities (Mezirow, 1997) can be created that enable educator and student co-creation of ‘change-maker’ career trajectories. The aim is to inspire students on an individual level about sustainability and how they can make a difference, the career opportunities available, and pathways towards these careers. Consequently, this can lead to gains by universities and future employers, alongside broader planetary and societal gains.