ESG is no longer a specialisation — it's a job requirement

Ten years ago sustainability sat in a corner of the curriculum where interested students could find it. That arrangement no longer matches what happens to graduates once they start work.

The regulatory floor moved

Disclosure requirements, supply chain scrutiny and investor expectations have all converged on the same outcome: a mid-level manager in almost any function now has some reporting obligation with a sustainability dimension attached. That is not an ethical claim. It is an operational one.

What this changes in a classroom

If ESG is an elective, students learn it as a worldview. If it runs through every specialisation, they learn it as a constraint — which is how it actually arrives at work.

A finance student should meet climate risk inside valuation, not in a separate module about values.

So the marketing track meets it as claims substantiation and greenwashing risk. The finance track meets it in disclosure and climate-adjusted risk. Operations meets it in circularity and supply chain traceability. HR meets it in workforce and governance metrics. The sustainability specialisation still exists for students who want depth — but nobody now graduates without the literacy.

The honest limitation

Teaching sustainability inside every function risks diluting it into a paragraph at the end of each syllabus. We are alert to that, and the guard against it is assessment: if the ESG component is not assessed within the functional module, it becomes decorative. Where we have got this right, the sustainability question is part of the main case, not an appendix to it.

What students should expect

Expect to be asked, in an operations exam, what a circular model does to your unit economics. Expect a marketing case where the sustainability claim is legally exposed. Expect, in interviews, to be asked what you would measure — because increasingly, recruiters are.