Abstract

There has been a growing interest in environmental issues for the past 30 odd years. The world at large is becoming more socially conscious about the impact of environmental issues such as global warming, achieving sustainable growth and development. On a corporate level, businesses are slowly recognising the need to be more accountable in their pursuit of higher profit margins, and that good business practice and sustainability go hand in hand. Education in sustainable development has become fairly topical amongst educators. In Australia, while there have been many courses in environmental and sustainability studies, there are to date, still limited courses available in the field of sustainable business, and when taught they are often conducted at the subject level in post graduate courses. Within industry there appears to be limited knowledge as to what sustainability is let alone its implementation in a business context. This paper will investigate the current trend and initiatives taken by the higher education sector in Australia in promoting education for sustainability and compares this with the rest of the world. In particular, the paper will investigate the shortcomings at the higher education sector incorporating sustainability in the business studies curriculum at higher education sector. If Australia is to be in the forefront of the promotion of sustainable business practices by equipping current and future graduates to be sustainable specialists, then a lot more need to be done today or the country will find itself with a serious shortage of skills in the near future.