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

Abstract

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.

1. Introduction

Engineers have a key role to play in achieving the sustainable future embodied by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals [1], especially civil engineers, with the built environment contributing nearly 40% of global carbon emissions [2]. Broader society, engineering students and industry want higher levels of sustainability knowledge in engineering education [3]. To achieve this end, universities are claiming that sustainability is increasingly being incorporated into higher education, encouraging engineers to tackle complex environmental issues [4]. However, the actual integration of sustainability into engineering curricula is often slow, insufficient and incomplete [5], reflecting a long-standing perception that engineering is often disconnected from pressing societal needs [6]. That is, despite the need for including sustainability in engineering education [7], the possible gap between the espoused commitment to integrate sustainability into engineering education and the actual levels of sustainability topics being included in engineering curricula needs to be investigated.

Accreditation bodies are powerful catalysts for curricular change in engineering education, with their standards evolving to require the integration of sustainability, often framed within broader competencies such as ethics and social responsibility [8]. For example, one of main international standards, the Washington Accord, requires that engineering programs address sustainability [9]. However, the specific requirements vary considerably among different accreditation bodies [10]. The lack of a unified approach by the engineering accreditation bodies presents an inconsistent context for the universities.

The universities also face challenges in embedding sustainability competencies into courses, because significant updates to curricula are required to ensure that graduates are prepared for sustainable engineering practices [11,12]. Furthermore, broad declarations do not easily translate into widespread curricular change, especially in loosely coupled systems such as universities [5,6]. The net effect of an inconsistent context and implementation difficulties is that approaches to incorporating sustainability into engineering curricula vary widely, from superficial ‘add-on’ courses to fully integrated courses that have been through a fundamental redesign [13].

Consequently, this study aims to investigate the extent to which sustainability has been included in undergraduate civil engineering syllabi across Australia, in terms of both breadth and depth. To that end, the sections below will briefly review the role and impact of accreditation bodies in and on university engineering courses, as well as how a common consequence of an accreditation body is that many degrees end up being very similar, a phenomenon known as isomorphism, which can be explained using institutional theory.

1.1. Institutions Accrediting University Curricula in Australia

Accreditation is a key driver of curriculum design in Australian engineering education [12]. The accreditation body for engineering courses in Australia is Engineers Australia, and they play a central role in shaping the engineering curricula of Australian universities [7]. Engineers Australia also ensures that local engineering degrees meet global standards, aligning with international agreements such as the Washington Accord [14]. The Washington Accord, administered by the International Engineering Alliance, facilitates the mutual recognition of engineering degrees among full signatory countries [15]. The global recognition of accredited qualifications underscores the importance of meeting Engineers Australia’s standards for universities.

In addition to Engineers Australia, other organizations play a role in regulating and shaping the skills of engineering graduates. The International Engineering Alliance, for instance, sets overarching standards that draw on the Washington Accord, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and guidance from the World Federation of Engineering Organizations [16].

In Australia the federal government sets the broad parameters of the qualification frameworks and EA administers the accreditation system, while academics are responsible for the design and delivery of the degrees. For engineering degrees, the requirements of professional accreditation are expected to be met and play a key central role in the Australian system [17]. The Australian Council of Engineering Deans works alongside Engineers Australia to influence accreditation processes [18]. These bodies collectively influence the content and focus of engineering programs, including the integration of sustainability principles.

Engineers Australia plays a significant role in shaping engineering curricula by setting accreditation standards that Australian universities strive to meet. In effect, many of the parties in the system rely on the discipline-specific EA accreditation for improvements [19], such that EA accreditation is seen as driving innovation and improvement [17]. However, while accreditation provides a marker of quality, there is a concern that it may also lead universities to focus more on maintaining their accredited status than on evaluating the effectiveness of their educational outcomes. That is, once an institution gains legitimacy, there is often a shift in focus from innovation and improvement to simply maintaining legitimacy [20]. The universities may feel pressured to conform to a minimum standard rather than striving for a more in-depth exploration of sustainability issues [13]. Their focus on maintaining their accredited status may lead to some universities incorporating sustainability into their programs only to the extent necessary to comply with industry standards and accreditation guidelines. If all institutions are offering similar programs in response to the same external pressures, there is little incentive to develop unique or more effective approaches to teaching sustainability [21]. The resulting similarity across curricula is a phenomenon known in institutional theory as isomorphism.

1.2. Institutional Theory and Isomorphism

Institutional theory proposes several mechanisms and forces that explain why and how organizations act in certain ways. Perhaps the most applicable of these mechanisms in this context are legitimation, which explains why, and isomorphism, which explains how, organizations become similar [22]. Organizations put in effort to achieve legitimacy because to obtain the support of the public, they must convince them that they are worthy [23]. The desire for legitimacy is so strong that organizations will adopt practices and processes that are inefficient and create problems within the organization [24]. There are many approaches to achieve or enhance an organization’s legitimacy, but the most common is to adapt its structure to forms that have been acknowledged as legitimate, resulting in a similarity of structure known as isomorphism.

There are three forces that can lead to organizations having the same form: (1) coercive isomorphism, which occurs because of external pressures from society and other organizations, (2) mimetic isomorphism, arising from imitation, and (3) normative isomorphism, which can particularly arise from the pressures associated with professionalization [22]. Coercive isomorphism occurs when forces are placed on organizations by other organizations in the external environment, pushing them to be aligned with a society’s cultural expectations, leading to a lack of will for the organizations to change [25]. Mimetic isomorphism occurs when organizations copy specific aspects or structures from other organizations that they believe to be more successful [22].

Normative isomorphism occurs when social forces pressure individuals in an organization to conform to the norms of a profession [26]. The forces pushing individuals toward professionalization are particularly enculturated through formal education and legitimation, where members of the profession receive similar training, resulting in their having similar worldviews, although that pressure to conform to professional norms continues later in their careers as they interact with professional colleagues [27]. These normative pressures are self-reinforcing in that higher levels of professionalization lead to more normative isomorphism, which leads to higher levels of professionalization in relevant organizations [28].

Together, these forces impact the structures and processes of universities such as their curricula. Perhaps the broadest of these forces comes from federal government requirements that universities have to comply with in order to be licensed as universities (such as the Higher Education Standards Framework, 2021 [29], as enforced by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) Act, 2011 [30]). Then, for engineering specifically, the universities comply with the guidelines of Engineers Australia if they want to have their accreditation. All of the universities offering engineering degrees in Australia have full accreditation from Engineers Australia for their long-standing engineering degrees.

Furthermore, other major systems of education and engineering education around the world appear to have key sources of drivers for change other than the professional accreditation bodies. For example, overviews of attempts to include more about sustainability in engineering education in the European context (e.g., [31]) suggest that their systems give substantially more precedence to university boards than the Australian system, with only distant mentions about the actions of, or the need for support from, professional accreditation bodies. Similarly, and more recently, the introduction of European education frameworks may provide the stimulus or opportunity to increase the profile of sustainability in higher education, with the presidents of universities in Spain then recommending the inclusion of sustainability-related issues in the curricula of all degrees [32].

However, when considering the presence of sustainability in engineering curricula, the impact of broad mandates is inconsistent. For example, a 2023 review of UK engineering education found that despite accreditation requirements, the visible prevalence of sustainability in the publicly accessible documents of many disciplines remains low, suggesting that integration is often hidden or not pervasive [10].

To assess the impacts of such regulation and accreditation on engineering education in Australia, one approach is to assess the presence of sustainability in the relevant degree [33]. Such an assessment may indicate which of a variety of approaches have been used to include sustainability in education, ranging from having a subject or two that is tacked-on through to systemically integrating sustainability throughout the degree, requiring the redesign of the entire educational framework [13]. Limited or superficial inclusion of sustainability issues may not have as much impact on the skills or awareness of students as the holistic and systematic integration of sustainability [6,33]. That is, the degrees can vary in terms of the breadth of coverage as well as in terms of the depth of emphasis placed on sustainability [13].

In summary, there is a need to include sustainability in engineering education in order to address climate change [7]. Institutional forces such as accreditation bodies are powerful catalysts for curricular change in engineering education, with their standards evolving to require the integration of sustainability [8]. Yet the international experience is that there is likely to be a gap between the espoused commitment to integrate sustainability into engineering and the actual presence of sustainability in engineering degrees. Consequently, this study aims to investigate the extent to which sustainability has been included in undergraduate civil engineering syllabi across Australia, in terms of both breadth and depth, and how it is shaped by accreditation and institutional pressures.

2. Materials and Methods

To assess the extent to which sustainability-related content is being taught to civil engineers in Australia, this study applies content coding to identify the presence or absence of sustainability and related terms in the subject documentation for the core units (i.e., mandatory for a university’s degree) across Australian universities. To efficiently assess the curricula impacting the majority of engineering graduates in Australia, the largest universities by engineering enrolment were targeted. Next, for a university to be included in this study, the syllabi, sometimes called unit outlines, for the core units in the civil engineering degree at that university needed to be publicly available. Although the materials were publicly available for many universities, others did not make their unit outlines available publicly and attempts to source these through university administrators were not successful. In the end, 11 universities were included in this study, representing 58% of all engineering students [34] enrolled in Australia, with these universities having available data and representing a broad spectrum of universities across Australia. These universities came from five Australian states, representing a strong cross-section of the university sector in Australia.

The civil engineering degrees at each of the 11 target universities were investigated, and the core units in each civil engineering program were identified. The focus on obtaining the outlines for core units was a deliberate decision aimed at assessing the minimum quantity of sustainability education required within civil engineering degrees. By analyzing these core units, insight into the foundational sustainability content that all students are expected to encounter can be obtained. There was a wide range between the universities regarding the number of core units included in their civil engineering degree, ranging from 19 to 28 subjects. Consequently, all data were standardized as a percentage of core units containing sustainability or related content to allow for direct comparisons between universities to be made.

To determine whether these core units included sustainability or related concepts, content coding was applied to the unit outlines (syllabi) of all of these units. Unit outlines were chosen as the focus for analysis because they contain a large amount of data, including unit topics, week-by-week breakdowns, learning outcomes and course descriptions. Outlines were preferred over other information sources due to their comprehensiveness and ubiquity across institutions, and because these are generally viewed as the source of truth in any unit (that is, a unit’s content rarely if ever deviates from the content contained in the unit outline).

Content coding is a valuable research tool for use with qualitative data, especially written information, because it is iterative, is systematic and can categorize large volumes of text into groupings that represent similar meanings or ideas [35]. To determine whether sustainability and/or related concepts were present in the unit outlines (or syllabi) for each core unit across the 11 universities included in this study, manual content coding was performed. A manual approach was adopted because automated tools may select phrases from sections of the unit outlines that do not necessarily reflect actual course coverage and also may not add relevant newly found phrases to the search as they are discovered. The process of adding new phrases to the search as the search progressed led to the creation of a codebook (Appendix A) which included all the sustainability and related terms found across all the university civil engineering core unit outlines [36].

The analysis began with description of each unit outline, determining whether it contained any words or phrases already within the codebook or new phrases which should be added to the codebook. If any references to sustainability were made, the researchers added a ‘YES’ into the data sheet and noted what topics were mentioned. Next, the learning outcomes for each syllabus were examined. First, the number of learning outcomes which were present in each syllabus was counted and recorded. Then, using content coding, the researchers assessed whether any learning outcomes related to sustainability were present. If sustainability was mentioned, the terms were counted and recorded, and any new terms were added to the codebook. The process was repeated for the weekly content breakdown. When no weekly breakdown was provided within the syllabi, the analysis used the unit content to identify topics covered within the unit, allocating values according to the unit’s duration.

The content coding process resulted in a set of words that were present in the subject curriculum materials and were assessed as representing sustainability issues (applying [37]). In total, 104 sustainability and related terms were identified using this process. The five most common sustainability terms in these unit outlines were as follows: environmental, sustainability, sustainable, climate change and life cycle analysis. All other terms included in the codebook were relatively uncommon in these civil engineering core unit outlines.

3. Results

The results of the content coding of the syllabi are presented here in terms of the breadth and depth of the presence of sustainability. The breadth of the presence of sustainability in the curricula was assessed in terms of the number and proportion of core units mentioning a sustainability keyword, whether the learning outcomes of each unit included a keyword, and whether a keyword was present across the subject’s description, learning outcomes and content. The depth of sustainability content was assessed in terms of how many weeks of the subject mentioned any of the keywords.

The initial analysis focused on determining the presence of any mention of sustainability or related topics specified by the codebook across core units that a student completes during their four-year undergraduate degree, anywhere from within the unit description and unit learning outcomes to in the content covered. All of the examined universities had the same total number of units for graduation; however, there was no consistency in the number of core units, because each university had a different core course structure. Consequently, to account for this variation in the number of core subjects, both total counts of core units that contained mentions of sustainability and percentages of core units are examined.

Table 1. Number of core units containing sustainability or related terms in their unit outlines.

University	Number of Core Units Containing Sustainability	Number of Core Units	Percentage of Core Units Containing Sustainability
UNI 1	8	24	33.3%
UNI 2	7	22	31.8%
UNI 3	7	25	28.0%
UNI 4	9	28	32.1%
UNI 5	6	23	26.1%
UNI 6	4	19	21.1%
UNI 7	6	23	26.1%
UNI 8	5	24	20.8%
UNI 9	5	26	19.2%
UNI 10	2	28	7.1%
UNI 11	11	25	44.0%
Grand Total	70		26.2%

summarizes the results when looking at the quantity of core units that contain at least one mention of a sustainability term within their syllabi. UNI 11 has the highest number of units with mentions of sustainability, with 11 out of 25 core units (or 44% of all core engineering units at that university) mentioning sustainability in their unit outlines. In contrast, UNI 10 had only two core units, or 7.1% of all core units, in their engineering degree that had any mention of sustainability or related terms in their unit outlines. The average percentage of core units including a mention of sustainability across all the assessed universities was 26.2%, and most other universities came in around the mean value (ranging from a low of 19.2% at UNI 9 to a high of 33.3% at UNI 1). These results suggest a tendency toward homogeneity in the presence of sustainability in unit outlines for most of the sample universities, albeit with two outliers.

Next, the proportion of learning outcomes that were related to sustainability across the core units for each university and the total were determined. This analysis aimed to quantify how many learning outcomes explicitly incorporate sustainability concepts (i.e., including any of the terms presented in the codebook, Appendix A), thereby indicating the extent to which these topics are integrated into the educational objectives of each degree.

Table 2. Sustainability learning outcomes in core unit outlines.

University	Sustainability-Related Learning Outcomes	Total Learning Outcomes	% of Learning Outcomes Containing Sustainability
UNI 1	4	125	3.2%
UNI 2	6	154	3.9%
UNI 3	11	120	9.2%
UNI 4	12	171	7.0%
UNI 5	5	157	3.2%
UNI 6	7	150	4.7%
UNI 7	7	215	3.3%
UNI 8	3	137	2.2%
UNI 9	12	173	6.9%
UNI 10	5	142	3.5%
UNI 11	15	176	8.5%
Total	87	1720	5.1%

presents the number of learning outcomes with mentions of sustainability content relative to the total number of learning outcomes for all core engineering units for each university. Examples of what sustainability learning outcomes look like in university unit learning outcomes include the following: “Identify, discuss, and generate solutions to a humanitarian engineering design problem using sustainability solutions and prioritise these solutions in terms of social, economic and environmental factors and their technical merits and/or viability”; and “Discuss and debate the most effective means of dealing with current and future water shortages in an urban context with an appreciation for climate change and sustainability issues”. The overall average for mentions of sustainability or related terms across all 11 university learning outcomes in core units was 5.1%. Among the universities, UNI 3 and UNI 11 exhibited the highest percentage of sustainability mentions in learning outcomes, with 9.2% and 8.5%, respectively. Conversely, the lowest number of mentions of sustainability or related terms in core unit learning outcomes was found at UNI 8 at 2.2%. The remaining universities all fell within 2% of the average, again suggesting a tendency toward homogeneity in the results across universities.

However, despite the apparent similarity in the number of mentions of sustainability and related terms in core unit outlines, not all mentions of sustainability-related terms were equal in terms of the value they represent in the unit. For example, while some units contained target terms in numerous sections of the unit outline, including in the unit description, learning outcomes and the taught content, many others included the terms in only one or two of these locations, suggesting that sustainability themes are not being fully realized across all facets of the unit. Examples of having sustainability content mentioned in these three locations include the following: unit description—“This unit aims to further develop students’ understanding of water sustainability and environmental issues while undertaking water engineering design projects with relevant industry partners; unit learning outcomes—“Discuss and debate the most effective means of dealing with current and future water shortages in an urban context with an appreciation for climate change and sustainability issues”; and unit content—“Sustainable Urban Water Management Issues”. In this case, all three core areas include an explicit mention of and/or focus on sustainability. These examples provide context for how sustainability and related terms were identified as being present or absent in the unit outlines for each university’s core units (Figure 1). Figure 1 illustrates where, within a given unit, the mentions of sustainability or related terms were found. Only 20 of the 267 units considered in this study contained mentions in all three locations, while 197 contained no mention anywhere. The most common place for sustainability or related terms to be mentioned was in learning outcomes (55 total unit outlines), followed by course descriptions (40 total unit outlines) and content (34 total unit outlines).

The next phase of the analysis involved determining the overall number of weeks in the curriculum that include sustainability content. The weekly content metric is used to understand how frequently and to what extent sustainability topics are integrated into the curriculum across the studied universities. The results provide the total number of weeks for the core units to better understand the proportion of sustainability in the degree (

Table 3. Number of course-weeks with sustainability or related content present at each university.

University	Total Weeks with Sustainability Content	Total Core Unit-Weeks	% of Core Weeks
UNI 1	3	288	1.0%
UNI 2	4	264	1.5%
UNI 3	5	300	1.7%
UNI 4	8	336	2.4%
UNI 5	5	273	1.8%
UNI 6	16	247	6.5%
UNI 7	15	299	5.0%
UNI 8	2	244	0.6%
UNI 9	14	260	5.4%
UNI 10	9	364	2.5%
UNI 11	18	300	6.0%
Total	99	3175	3.1%
Average	9	289	3.1%

).

The results for the analysis show that every university contains some content topics that are sustainability-related. However, there was considerable variation in the number of weeks devoted to this content between universities. UNIs 6, 7, 9 and 11 all have 5% or more of all core unit weeks devoted to sustainability or related content. Meanwhile, UNI 1 and UNI 8 had 1% or fewer of all weeks devoted to this content. The remaining five universities all had sustainability and related content present in between 1.5% and 2.5% of the core unit weeks of study, with an overall mean across all 11 universities of 3.1%.

There are high levels of variability, with UNI 11 exceeding all other universities with 18 weeks, which can be converted to 4.7% of the total course units. There are three other universities that exceed the average of 2.4% for the total time spent with sustainability topics mentioned in the content. The least course time spent on a sustainability-related topic is at UNI 8 at 0.6% or just 2 weeks of the entire degree. Only four universities (6, 7, 9 and 11) contained sustainability or related content that spanned more than 12 weeks (the typical duration for an equivalent of one unit of study for one semester).

4. Discussion

Overall, sustainability had a negligible presence in the Australian civil engineering programs assessed, indicating that these programs are not addressing the urgent need for more sustainability in engineering. At a broad level, the presence of sustainability in the degrees assessed in Australia appears to be far less prevalent than in comparable European universities (e.g., for Spain, per [32]) by approximately an order of magnitude.

There appears to have been little change in the presence of sustainability in Australian engineering education since previous studies (e.g., [7]). Consequently, increasing the presence of sustainability in education still requires a thorough reassessment of how sustainability is embedded in civil engineering programs [13]. The universities appear to have quite similar, albeit low, levels of sustainability in their courses, suggesting the presence of isomorphism and, given the overwhelming compliance with accreditation guidelines, most likely normative isomorphism.

That is, the universities are incorporating sustainability education only to the extent currently mandated and are complying with the norms of the professional body (per [26]). The universities appear to be following the requirements of Engineers Australia and not raising levels of sustainability content as desired by industry and students [3], in the absence of any coercive specifications from the generalist whole-of-university regulations. In a similar manner to that noted in other contexts in [13,20], once accredited, the universities appear to be focusing on compliance with a minimum standard so as to maintain their legitimacy, rather than pushing for innovation and improvement. For the universities to significantly update their curricula so as to embed sustainability would be challenging [11,12]. With normative guidelines saying that these higher levels of sustainability content are not necessary for accreditation, universities have little incentive to push the presence of sustainability (per [21]). Conversely, to effect an increase in levels of sustainability in engineering degrees, a clear avenue would be to harness the self-reinforcing characteristics of these normative pressures [28], by changing the requirements in the standards of Engineers Australia.

The general regulatory requirements for universities have to cover the full range of possible degrees and do not address any specific degree or any specific topic such as sustainability. There were also unlikely to be any mimetic pressures because there were no cases of success, a university with notable levels of sustainability content, to try to imitate.

There are several ways forward from the current situation to achieve a stronger presence of sustainability in engineering education. The fastest and most effective means of effecting an increase in sustainability in engineering education in Australia would appear to be through harnessing the isomorphic power of EA. If EA updates their accreditation standards to require universities to include higher rates of sustainability education within the curriculum, or specified minimum quantities of sustainability education, the universities would do so. Getting Engineers Australia to update their accreditation process is the simplest solution, because all universities currently seek out and receive accreditation from this organization regardless of its nominally optional nature (per [38,39]). Universities would be unlikely to turn away from seeking accreditation for their engineering degrees from Engineers Australia.

The apparent power of EA is such that the EA accreditation process has become a focal point with engineering academics beseeching EA to lead the way (e.g., per [19]), with calls for updates to the accreditation outcomes and process to drive changes, such as for increasing the presence of sustainability [17]. However, the experience of engineering academics is often that the EA accreditation process is conservative and reinforces old-fashioned conceptions of engineering education [19].

Another solution to the minimal incorporation of sustainability in civil engineering degrees would be the creation of an alternative accrediting body. An alternative body could have a focus on sustainability and future-proofing industries or could be an alternative specifically for engineers in Australia, as has occurred for some other professions in Australia (e.g., accounting). If the new accreditor effectively addresses the priorities of employers and students, it could foster a market-driven legitimation process, as employers begin to prioritize graduates from universities accredited by this forward-thinking body [40], encouraging universities to adapt and enhance graduate employability. Such an organization could counter the normative isomorphism limiting sustainability education in civil engineering degrees in Australian universities, although such a body would likely lead to a new normative state in which sustainability content is improved across all universities, but diversity and points of difference between them are limited.

A third solution to increase the amount of sustainability in civil engineering curricula is for universities to push for the inclusion of more sustainability in their own courses. However, the industry and future students currently pay a lot of attention to the accreditation status of the degrees. Such a change would be risky, but if the incorporation of more sustainability content increased student enrolment, the employability of students and rankings, other universities could soon imitate the successful implementation of additional sustainability education with their own curriculum updates (applying [41]). Such a result would, again, lead to a new isomorphic state where university content is similar, but with an improved emphasis on sustainability. However, the increased emphasis on sustainability would occur only if a positive response from students and employers was a direct consequence of an innovative university increasing such content on its own and accepting the risk associated with that approach. A less risky combination of some of the above approaches would be for industry leaders and the Australian Council of Engineering Deans to lobby Engineers Australia to change their standards.

There are limitations to this study that affect the conclusions drawn. One initial limitation is the sample size. By selecting a sample of universities with large enrolments, the findings may reflect the level of flexibility or rigidity of these larger universities. However, the uniformity of the results suggests that the findings are likely to be applicable to the broader landscape of Australian civil engineering undergraduate degrees. The consistency of the data provides a strong basis for inferences about the entire population, as at the least, the results cover the majority of the new civil engineering graduates in Australia.

The most significant limitation is the variability in course content. The research relies on unit outlines, which may not accurately reflect actual teaching practices. Variations in how unit convenors write their outlines can lead to inconsistencies both within universities and across the sample. Missing or unstated content may not be captured in the results. To mitigate the impact of missing information from the subjects’ unit outlines, this study also assessed learning outcomes and descriptions, which helped to ensure a comprehensive coverage of units.

5. Conclusions

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which sustainability is embedded within the civil engineering programs offered by Australian universities. The findings demonstrate that, while sustainability is acknowledged within the curriculum, its inclusion was minimal across the civil engineering degrees. The results suggest that institutional pressures, driven by the need to conform to accreditation standards, have resulted in isomorphism across Australian universities. The limited focus on sustainability raises concerns about the adequacy of current curricula in equipping future engineers to face global environmental challenges. Increasing the presence of sustainability in engineering degrees will require universities to rethink the pressures influencing their curriculum design, particularly the standards set by accreditation bodies such as Engineers Australia.

Engineers Australia promotes the importance of sustainability inside the profession of engineering. Engineers Australia states that sustainability is a core value and reflects a commitment to addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable engineering practices [42]. However, Engineers Australia is currently accrediting four-year bachelor-level degrees with as low as two weeks of environmental sustainability-related topics. The disconnect between accreditation and the entity’s values should be investigated to identify why this gap is occurring.

Furthermore, the nature of the accreditation process may pose an obstacle to an increased presence of sustainability in engineering curricula. Engineers Australia reviews degrees every five years, making it difficult for universities to quickly adapt to emerging environmental needs. Unless the accreditation standards are updated to emphasize sustainability more strongly, universities may continue to deliver an insufficient level of sustainability education in their programs for many years to come. More broadly, the traditional engineering paradigm needs to acknowledge the gap between society and technology, where engineering solutions are often inferior to social solutions, and instead move toward engineers being more holistic problem solvers [6].

To improve the amount of sustainability content in civil engineering degrees at Australian universities, this study suggests three ways forward. First, Engineers Australia could be convinced, through social or university pressures, to improve the amount of sustainability content required to gain accreditation. This would be the simplest solution as universities are already highly responsive to Engineers Australia and would quickly accede to new conditions imposed by them. Next, an alternative accrediting body could be founded that focuses on sustainability and, with a view toward future-proofing students and industry, this body could gain traction, leading universities to seek this accreditation to stay competitive. Finally, universities themselves could seek to improve the amount of sustainability content they provide as a point of difference from their competitors, and if enrolments and/or employment outcomes improved on account of such changes, other universities would likely follow suit. Ironically, all of these potential solutions would continue to see a system where isomorphism is the end state of affairs, but this new state of isomorphism would settle at a level with improved sustainability content.

Future research could extend the above findings by assessing how effectively the limited sustainability content is being taught, or how well students are absorbing and applying this sustainability knowledge. Another possible topic could be an assessment of the impact of the currently limited sustainability education on engineering graduates’ ability to meet sustainability challenges in the workforce. But for now, the high levels of consistency in engineering syllabi across Australian universities suggest that the most direct approach for improving the presence of sustainability would be to harness normative power and for the accrediting body, Engineers Australia, to increase the amount of sustainability in their standards, and the universities would be very likely to comply.