Are Accreditation Bodies Holding Back Sustainability in Civil Engineering Education in Australia? An Analysis of Syllabi

Civil engineers have a substantial role to play in addressing the sustainability challenges facing the world. Accreditation bodies have recognized the need for more sustainability content in engineering education. Yet the inclusion of sustainability content in university engineering curricula has been slow and incomplete. To assess the progress of these changes, this study examines the extent to which sustainability is present in Australian undergraduate civil engineering courses and how it is shaped by accreditation and institutional pressures. Content coding of syllabi and course outcomes was used to assess the extent to which sustainability topics were present in compulsory units in the 11 universities with the largest engineering enrolments in Australia. The results indicate that there were negligible amounts of explicit sustainability content across most of the universities assessed, suggesting that they were not meeting the urgent need for more sustainability in engineering education. The consistency across the universities reveals strong isomorphism, suggesting possible solutions for increasing the presence of sustainability in engineering education in Australia. The most direct change mechanism would be for the accrediting body, Engineers Australia, to use their legitimation power. If Engineers Australia’s standards required a notable presence of sustainability competences, the universities would be very likely to comply.