The sustainability-to-employment pipeline: the impact of SDG-related curricula on graduates’ employability

Public and private organizations—including higher education institutions —frequently adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to facilitate a better future. In their efforts to realize the Agenda 2030, universities are focusing on how teaching and curricula shape students’ competencies in interpreting and contributing to current societal challenges. Likewise, with businesses increasingly engaged in sustainable development issues, students will need SDG-related skills to align with current job-market requirements. Here, we examine the relationship between master graduates’ employability and the presence and type of SDGs in their curricula. We run a series of logistic regressions where we use three different model specifications: (i) curriculum with an SDG-related ECTS above the mean, (ii) curriculum related to a specific class of SDG (well- being, environment, economy, governance), and (iii) curriculum related to a specific SDG. Further, we consider three aspects of employability: having a job, job coherence (i.e. the match between a job and one’s field of study), and employment quality (i.e. having a higher salary). For this purpose, we collected data from 5,784 master’s graduates at the University of Bologna in 2017. We derived employability measures from 2020 AlmaLaurea data to have a three-year time lag from graduation. Generally, we find that students who attended courses with SDG-related content achieved a higher and better occupation or a better skill match. At a grouped level, we find that SDG categories have a different impact on the students’ working outcomes. For instance, students with more SDG-related ECTS in the economy area have higher odds of being employed, finding a better job-skill match, and getting better salaries. In addition, the single goals were studied by showing the effects on finding work, having a skill match and earning a better salary.