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Reality check of sustainable engineering education: exploring the leverage power of early graduates in the workplaces
Karvinen, Meeri Pajukari, Tiina
Karvinen, Meeri
Pajukari, Tiina
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Date
2025
Educational Level
Curriculum Area
Geographical Setting
Finland
Abstract
The societal sustainability transformation requires rapid actions from all organisations. Given that engineering students are increasingly being educated to consider sustainability in their future positions, early-career engineering graduates have the potential to accelerate sustainability transformation in their organisations. However, working life as an environment differs from university environment in terms of social relations and working culture. Despite extant research has identified that graduates face challenges when transitioning to the world of work, the early career perspective has remained relatively underemphasized in engineering education for sustainability research: how the sustainability expertise of recent graduates is being recognised and utilised, and how the employers view the role of graduates regarding the sustainability efforts of their organisations. Having deeper understanding of the reality that graduates face in their early careers could provide valuable insights for educating changemakers. We interviewed ten employers and four graduates representing the water and environmental engineering field in Finland on their perceptions of graduates' sustainability expertise and role in the organisations. In addition, we explored factors that may restrict or enhance the leverage power of the graduates regarding the organizations' sustainability efforts. We transcribed and pseudonymised the interview data and then coded and categorised it using abductive theme analysis, which allows for utilising both deductive and inductive approach in creating the themes and subthemes. Our key findings indicate that graduates are generally considered as beginners who need to grow as experts rather than welcoming them as sources of new approaches and insights. In addition, despite sustainability is increasingly being promoted in the education, the employers seem to prioritize other competencies when recruiting new graduates. After the recruitment, they lack measures to explore what the new employee knows and how to best utilise their competencies. As a result, the employers remain unaware of graduates' competencies, which forms a central hindering factor for the role of graduates as changemakers. Graduates' sustainability actions are also restricted by the lack of power due to their hierarchical position, and resources. However, measures seem to exist in the organisations to support graduate actions, such as implementing a sustainability strategy, and promoting an open culture. We discuss the implications of these findings on the current pedagogical approaches to integrate sustainability in engineering education. We particularly emphasise how the education could improve the apparently low leverage power of engineering graduates in their early-career organisations through pedagogical approaches, and intensified academia-industry collaboration.
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Keywords (free text)
water/wastewater engineering, industry collaboration, engineering education, engineering for sustainable development, education for sustainabilty, sustainability in engineering