Higher Education’s Response to the Climate Emergency Is Failing to Help Prepare Students for the Future of Work: Why Preparing Our Students for Lives and Careers Within a Disrupted Biosphere is a Critical, Sectorwide Responsibility

Abstract

In Short Higher education is responding to the climate emergency through disaster preparedness, climate research, and carbon-neutral pledges, but the sector is failing to prepare students for likely disruptions and changes in their future careers and lives. While curriculum on climate science and information about “green” jobs are important steps, academic programs and career services have yet to prioritize sharing information with students about climate-induced changes to their chosen professions. What if the higher education sector had the opportunity to prepare students for how the COVID-19 pandemic would disrupt their studies, lives, and futures—and we failed to do so? Departments and career services units should catalog known risks and disruptions to students’ likely professions (and the world of work in general) and embed this information in coursework and academic and career advising. Higher education also needs a new ethos guiding institutional responsibility and action, where a sense of service and mission rejects neoliberalism’s commitment to self-interest to extend to our entire biosphere.