Inclusion of Sustainability into Business Education: Understanding the Student’s Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, and Beliefs—A Study Based on India

Global research has highlighted on the urgency for businesses to become sustainable. We argue in our paper that if future managers need to enhance their knowledge and understanding of sustainability so that they can develop strategies that will make their organizations more sustainable which in turn will be beneficial for the organization, then business education both at the undergraduate and post graduate levels must incorporate sustainability education in their curriculum. The main aims of our paper were to capture the student’s perception regarding inclusion of sustainability into the business education and understand the student’s awareness, knowledge, attitude, and beliefs regarding sustainability, SDGs, and business education. An online questionnaire was administered to both undergraduate and post graduate students of business education and its related areas. The survey was returned by 304 respondents. From our study, we observed that students were very familiar with sustainability related terms and their meanings. Our respondents’ understanding of sustainability and the 17 SDGs was high. The student’s attitude towards sustainability and the 17 SDGs was observed to be very positive. The students have strongly agreed on college/university’s role in bringing about sustainability and they felt that higher educational institutions (HEIs) should make this a priority. The respondents have agreed largely about the university/college support to sustainability and the SDGs within its curriculum of business education. The three most popular ways of engaging students with sustainability and SDGs were Student dissertations/theses followed by student project and Internships or placements. Our respondent’s belief on commitment towards sustainability was very high but when it came to sustainability practices in the campus there seemed to be a “commitment gap”. Our respondents to a very large extent have agreed on the aspect of inclusion of sustainability in the curricula and research but as a Value-Addition Course.