Universities need to embed green skills across their courses to ensure graduates are ready for a rapidly changing jobs market, according to a major national research project involving De Montfort University, Leicester (DMU).
The Green Skills for Green Jobs report calls on universities to map green skills across their curricula, involve students in developing those abilities and make them more visible to employers.
It comes as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) highlights green jobs are growing twice as fast as the number of workers skilled to fill them, underlining the challenge of ensuring graduates have the capabilities employers increasingly need.
Dr Andrew Reeves, DMU's academic lead for Education for Sustainable Development, was a contributing author to the two-year research project, bringing expertise from a university which has made sustainability and the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) central to its teaching, research and civic engagement.
At DMU, the UN SDGs are embedded across the university’s approach to teaching, helping students understand how sustainability relates to their disciplines and future careers. The university has worked closely with the UN on the goals for a number of years.
That work has established DMU as an international leader in the field. In 2025, it was selected as the United Nations Academic Impact Global Hub Chair for SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, making it the only UK university leading one of the UN’s global academic SDG hubs.
As chair, DMU leads an international network exploring how universities can use teaching, research, partnerships and community engagement to address challenges facing cities and communities around the world.
Dr Andrew Reeves, DMU's academic lead for Education for Sustainable Development, said: "Every university subject area has environmental impacts to address and a positive contribution to make socially and towards the care of our planet.
“Green Skills are about the mindsets, values, transferable professional skills and subject-specific competencies that help make that happen. For DMU this use a strong focus across our curriculum."
The report argues that green skills should not be confined to environmental or sustainability careers. Instead, every job has the potential to become greener, making these skills relevant across professions and academic disciplines.
It recommends universities identify where green skills are being developed throughout their curricula and help students recognise and articulate those abilities to prospective employers.
DMU’s contribution provides practical examples of how this can work.
Two DMU initiatives feature among the project’s case studies. The Trading and Investments Simulation gives MSc Accounting and Finance students experience of using real-time data and industry software to manage a fund while balancing financial performance with environmental considerations.
The MSc Energy and Sustainable Development module Sustainable Development in Practice develops critical thinking, collaboration and problem-solving through group challenges, real-world projects and Carbon Literacy training.
Together, they demonstrate how sustainability can be integrated across different academic disciplines and reflect DMU’s wider approach to using the SDGs to connect students’ education with social and environmental challenges.
The research involved Oxford Brookes University, Aston University, DMU, the University of Exeter and Manchester Metropolitan University, alongside Students Organising for Sustainability UK.
Seven workshops involving 125 students, 44 university staff, 54 students and 27 industry representatives informed the research, alongside 15 case studies from 11 higher education providers.
The report also highlights transferable skills including resilience, adaptability, negotiation and critical thinking and calls on university careers teams to connect students with emerging green opportunities in their local areas.
The report's launch will be followed by two webinars exploring the findings and how universities can put green skills development into practice:
- Green Skills for Green Jobs: Launch Webinar – Friday 13 November.
- Green Skills for Green Jobs: Projects Showcase – Monday 23 November, featuring DMU's Dr Andrew Reeves and Dr Neil Lancastle presenting on their
Read the Green Skills for Green Jobs report.
Posted on Thursday 12 November 2026