Do higher education institutes lay a foundation for sustainability education? Perspectives from tourism and hospitality undergraduates

Abstract

Education for sustainable development has transformed from a discretionary to an essential element of consideration in higher education institutes. Nonetheless, limited attempts have been made to uncover the effectiveness and importance of such efforts in research scholarship, particularly in the Sri Lankan context. Hence, this article attempts to systematically evaluate the effectiveness and importance of incorporating dedicated sustainability- centric pedagogical interventions. This study collected data from 151 tourism and hospitality undergraduates at a higher education institute in Sri Lanka using a concurrent embedded mixed-methods approach. The findings of the study reveal that the extent of sustainability and sustainable tourism knowledge among undergraduates cannot be solely attributed to a dedicated sustainability module. However, students with higher general sustainability knowledge also demonstrated greater sustainable tourism-specific knowledge. Additionally, tourism and hospitality undergraduates perceived learning about sustainability as highly important and held high expectations from higher education institutes to act as principal educators in sustainability considerations.