The neglected child of sustainability education

Abstract: Since 1970s neoclassical economics has been identified as a major obstacle for reaching sustainability. Despite the world's growing attention to sustainability education, there has been just few attempts to assess the content and the competency building of sustainable development (SD) postgraduate programs. None has been evaluating if and how economics is integrated in such curricula. This study fills this gap in the empirical research by conducting a novel assessment of six leading SD transdisciplinary master programs in Sweden. Our study uses a qualitative approach to inquire how these programs teach students to understand, challenge and reorient dominant neoclassical economics and the reasoning behind it. Results revealed that the absence of an agreed-upon definition of both the economy and sustainability lead to the wide range of approaches on how to introduce the place and the role of the economy. Every program relies on their own understanding, perspectives and resourcefulness, while agreeing that their teaching should challenge neoclassical economics and engage their students in the various scales of system change. Yet, the time allocated to economics teaching does not exceed 8% of the programs ECTS. We argue that economics should take a much bigger place in postgraduate SD education. A proposed “transdisciplinary economics” calls for more collaboration with students, academia and outside of academia in a joint search for economic alternatives.