Circular Education and Its Impact on Sustainability: Stories from University College London (UCL) Students

Sustainability is a very particular topic in higher education because it centres on a challenge that is no less than changing the world. The essence is therefore a combination of rigorous academic thinking combined with a hope of real-world impact. Each student who comes to study sustainability faces this same, huge challenge, but each arrives and leaves from it with something unique to them. The stories in this chapter come from a variety of students who came to study the MSc in Economics and Policy of Energy and Environment (the “EPEE”) at University College London. The programme is a postgraduate course lasting 12 months, centring on environmental economics but broadening from this central core. As such the experience of the course can be intense, in terms of demands that are both academic and cultural, as students arrive from all parts of the globe, bringing with them a variety of pre-existing experiences. The stories indicate that all the students come to study sustainability with hope, high expectations—and with questions. What they leave the course with is partly what they imagined, but also surprises. This chapter gives voice to these individual stories of discovery in sustainability education.