Title: Opinions and aspirations for sustainability: what role does higher education play?

Authors: P. Wesley Routon; Atul K. Saxena

Addresses: School of Business, Georgia Gwinnett College, 1000 University Center Lane, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA ' School of Business, Georgia Gwinnett College, 1000 University Center Lane, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA

Abstract: The importance of sustainability is on the rise and society often looks to the younger, college-going generation to bring about future change. The questions of how much students change their opinions and aspirations related to sustainability during college, and in which directions, are therefore of import. Using a survey of 236,854 students representing 619 colleges and universities, we estimate answers to these questions. We find that, during college tenure, 51% of students change their aspirations to become involved in clean-up programs and 47% change opinions on governmental involvement in the environment. In both cases, almost as many students change their stance in one direction as the other. This contrasts with the general belief that higher education increases the uniformity of opinions and begs the follow-up question of which demographics and collegiate experiences are most related to specific stance changes. We find several such statistically significant relationships.

Keywords: sustainability; environmental sustainability; college students; government involvement; political leaning; clean-up program.

DOI: 10.1504/IER.2026.151406

Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, 2026 Vol.25 No.1, pp.63 - 82

Received: 02 Feb 2024
Accepted: 14 Dec 2024
Published online: 27 Jan 2026 *

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