Exploring Engineering Students' Perception of Sustainability and Ethics in Their Curriculum Across Disciplines

Sustainability and ethics are topics of significant, current importance in higher education. In engineering education, they take on even greater importance as engineers play a key role in addressing global issues. While multiple institutions have implemented initiatives explicitly focusing on sustainability and ethics in their curricula, less is known about the degree to which students perceive these efforts and their impact on their learning. The contributions of this study are important because they address discrepancies between instructors' intentions and the curriculum as experienced by students in the context of curricular reforms and an institutional shift towards sustainability. Our investigation of the perceptions of 244 students from 5 different engineering programs at a European engineering school shows that, contrary to institutional efforts, students do not yet see sustainability and ethics being a part of their courses. They identify lacunae in information and training, feedback from instructors, and inclusion in assessments. Although the data does not indicate differences based on year of study, it does reveal differences between study programmes. Open text responses (147) indicate that students welcome greater integration of sustainability and ethics in their engineering programmes, although what this would look like is not clear for some students. Since what students learn has been shown to depend both on what they perceive they are learning, and on the priorities communicated by assessment criteria, effective integration of sustainability and ethics in engineering curricula will require institutions and instructors to be more coherent and visible about the central importance of these topics and skills.