Sustainability in higher education : benefits and career prospects with an interdisciplinary higher education degree

Abstract: This is a study about sustainability in higher education, its benefits and employment potentials for sustainability graduates, as well as, contributions to sustainability through professions. The aim was to identify sustainability in higher education and the importance of interdisciplinarity on it through theory and a study sample of five master programs and find out benefits of such programs, career opportunities and potential contributions to sustainability via professions based on Lund University’s International Master Program in Environment and Sustainability (LUMES) alumni opinions. The last one was carried out through in depth interviews of 15 graduates of the LUMES program and the conducted data analysis was theoretic for sustainability in higher education, descriptive and comparative for the master programs and thematic for the graduates’ perspectives. The results indicated that sustainability in higher education is a vague but feasible concept and interdisciplinarity plays an important role on it. Universities have a wide range of different sustainability master programs that can be either more practical or more theoretical and the first ones offer more career opportunities to sustainability graduates. Moreover, master graduates gain valuable knowledge, develop their skills during their sustainability studies and they will possibly become project managers or sustainability – environmental consultants. The contributions to sustainability through related job positions vary from informing colleagues and co- employees on sustainability to obliging companies on adopting sustainability patterns. The principal conclusion was that interdisciplinarity is a matter of vital importance both on promoting sustainability in higher education and linking the differences between isolated specialization of the job market and the required holistic approach for sustainability.