Sustainability Alumni at Work—Interviews on Educated Sustainability Professionalism

Abstract

Education is widely recognized as a key ingredient in furthering society-wide sustainability transformation. Although there has been extensive research on higher education for sustainability, the qualitative outcomes of sustainability-focused education are less robustly interrogated. As more students graduate from sustainability-specific programmes, it should be asked: what kind of professionals are they and how do they operationalise sustainability at their work? This paper studied career paths and professionalism in the emerging professional field of sustainability, using semi-structured, in-depth interviews of 19 alumni of a master’s level sustainability-specific programme. The interview results reveal that professionalism in sustainability is based on ideals that appear to oppose or conflict the norms and values of several fields in which sustainability is applied. The results also show that the professionals often face challenges in practising sustainability in the workplace but have found strategies to manage these challenges. Finally, the alumni suggested that the sustainability profession is poised between being a specialisation orientation in other recognised fields and a generalist approach that takes sustainability itself as the specialisation practicable in several different fields.