BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
professionals were not equipped with the knowledge and competencies needed to manage sustainable businesses. Many higher education institutions are already working to remedy this situation for their current students, but they can also contribute to filling this gap for their alumni, thanks to the development of new, targeted lifelong learning options. Bringing alumni Back to School One solution, represented by the Back to School for the Planet initiative, leverages the existing relationship between higher education institutions and their alumni to provide critical sustainability learning in a way that is innovative and simple to implement. How? By considering alumni as potential students for newly introduced sustainability courses, sessions and activities. Most of the time, a strict boundary is set between students and graduates, but when it comes to sustainability, this boundary should be reconsidered. Indeed, on the topic of sustainability, many alumni resemble incoming students. They are new to the subject and curious to discover everything it has to offer. Business Schools can build on the trusted relationship with their alumni to offer them a free update by inviting them Back to School for the Planet. Whether updates are offered online or in person, this initiative brings alumni back into the classroom alongside current students to participate in the discussion. Beyond the clear advantage for alumni in terms of benefiting from quality education from their institution years, or even decades, after their graduation, their presence in the classroom proves
ifelong learning is a crucial part of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), which aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. In Business Schools, lifelong learning is
often offered to a wide audience of professionals, including those who did
not graduate from a management programme and seek the soft and hard skills necessary to get to the next step of their career. Today, in the context of the climate emergency, the need for companies to change the way we do business calls for greater commitment from Business Schools to transforming the paradigm not only among their current students, but also among their alumni. Where we are now Surveys (including 10 years of research around education and sustainability from UK organisation, Students Organising for Sustainability) are showing an undeniable shift in student expectations, with rising demand for the skills needed to transform companies in the Anthropocene Era. In the field, more and more practitioners are showing a willingness to adapt their professional practices by placing a strong focus on sustainability, but do not have the necessary training to do so. One reason for this is that sustainability teaching began as late as 1992 and has only recently begun to grow in scale. As a result (and what is now a defining obstacle to rapid change) during their studies, most current
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‘More and more practitioners are showing a willingness to adapt their professional practices by placing a strong focus on sustainability, but do not have the necessary training to do so’
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