Integrating Sustainability within University Sustainability Programme—Students’ Perception on Sustainable Cities and Communities Master’s Programme of the School of Humanities, USM

Abstract

The sustainability pillars seemed to have been embedded into most of higher educational institutions, throughout the world. Universiti Sains Malaysia as an APEX university has integrated Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to ensure its community lives in accordance with the sustainability objectives. To achieve this, Sustainable Cities and Communities Master Programme is an impressive effort to educate future leaders about the vitality of sustainability in developing a city and its community. In this paper, seven graduate students from this master programme were interviewed regarding their perceptions about the ESD that they have learned from the programme. One of the students admitted that this programme is a good platform to understand about urban social issues and problems in relation with the sustainable development, poverty, community’s response on infrastructure development and so on. In his opinion, the understanding about sustainability from the programme is beneficial.