Lifelong Learning on Sustainability for Personal, Professional and Social Transformation: Analyzing a Seven Year Experience from the University of the Basque Country

The UNESCO Chair on Sustainable Development and Environmental Education of the University of the Basque Country (Spain) has offered for seven editions a Postgraduate course on Environment and Sustainability. This postgraduate degree (30 ETCS credits) is mainly composed of lectures, workshops and field trips, and includes a final presentation and discussion of an applied project. It also includes the option of realizing an internship programme in different companies, institutions and NGOs. Students and professionals from different areas of knowledge take part in the course and learn on sustainability together with an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary panel of teachers. In order to analyze students’ satisfaction on the course, determine the rate of employment of post-students in jobs related to sustainability and analyze if the course has provoked them a lifelong learning towards sustainability, we conducted a survey on post-students. 48% of the students of the seven editions answered the survey. Results show that students’ satisfaction on the course is high. What students liked most of the course is its interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character, the great variety and quality of teachers from different professional backgrounds and with expertise in diverse sustainability subjects, the opportunity to make professional contacts, the active participation of the group, the internship programmes and the final applied project. 90% of student made an internship programme in different companies, institutions or NGOs. 92% of them said that they learned a lot in those work practices. With regard to employability, 50% consider that this postgraduate has served them to find a job related to sustainability. Moreover, 15% of the students that made an internship programme were employed in those same companies, and 75% of them are still working there (some of them have worked for over 5 years in the same company where they made the work practices within the postgraduate course). Post-students declare (88%) that this course has provoke them a reflection on attitudes and values towards sustainability. They have made a change of habits for a more sustainable lifestyle thanks to what they learned, reflected and practiced during the course. Now they recycle more, they make a more responsible consumption and they apply sustainability criteria at their workplaces. In conclusion, our study results show that this postgraduate course provides a lifelong learning towards sustainability with real employability opportunities. Its transdisciplinary character, its practical approach that seeks to find solutions to real problems and the active cooperation between the University and the private and public sectors, contributes to create social network towards a more sustainable present and future. Now that this postgraduate course has became a Master Degree (60 ETCS credits), we will use the lessons learned over this seven years, together with the recommendations extracted from this study, to maintain and improve the achieved quality standards.