Shaping Pro-Environmental Attitudes through Higher Education—A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Several authors argue that some types of academic education not focused on sustainability can also shape—at least some—competencies relevant to sustainability and turn students into more engaged individuals. The main goal of this article was to check this possibility based on the results of an e-questionnaire from 66 fresh graduates of a business-oriented university based in Poland. We found that respondents rated highly both the competencies that the university taught in the general sphere related to sustainable development and those important for their professional life and wanted further development of both groups of these competencies. Through regression analysis, we also found that the perceived development of SD competencies does not predict respondents’ ecological worldview. Of the studied predictors for ecological worldview, only female gender and mission- or socially-driven dream job remained in the regression model, accounting for approximately 18.6% of the variation in ecological worldview.