Sustainability looks different depending on where you stand, so UC offers more than one way in.
Undergraduate study
From the Faculty of Arts, the Bachelor of Social and Environmental Sustainability is a 360-point interdisciplinary degree built around systems thinking, indigenous partnerships and social action. Majors include Environmental Policy, Governance and Social Justice; Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Partnerships; Social Action, Community and Global Development; and Sustainable Business, Enterprise and Economics.
From the Faculty of Science, Environmental Science can be studied as the EIANZ-accredited Bachelor of Environmental Science with Honours, as a major within the Bachelor of Science, or as a minor added to almost any degree, preparing you for a wide range of possible careers.
Business, Education, Engineering, Health and Law each bring their own perspective too — so you can approach sustainability through the discipline that fits you, and turn what you care about into what you study.
Postgraduate study
Sustainability runs through postgraduate study at UC in many forms, from dedicated degrees to specialist options within established disciplines. The Master of Sustainable Futures and Innovation, for example, is flexible and largely online, with endorsements in Business, Environment, Energy or Social Impact and Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma exit points. Specialist degrees such as the Master of Disaster Risk and Resilience, Master of Policy and Governance, and Master of Urban Resilience and Renewal take sustainability into particular fields.
You don't need a sustainability-titled degree to work on sustainability, either. In most postgraduate qualifications, your thesis, dissertation or research project is yours to shape — so you can take a sustainability question into accounting, education, civil engineering, history, nursing or any other field, and work on it with a supervisor whose research is already heading that way.
These are only a starting point — explore the full range of UC postgraduate qualifications to find the one that fits your field and your ambitions.
Find Courses Mapped to the UN SDGs
Sustainability isn't confined to a single degree — it runs through courses in nearly every UC faculty. To help you find them wherever they sit, UC has mapped individual courses against the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals, from Climate Action and Life Below Water to Reduced Inequalities and Sustainable Cities and Communities.
That means you can search by the global challenge you care about rather than by department or degree title, and find relevant courses in disciplines you might not expect — engineering, law, health sciences, commerce and beyond. It's a practical way to build a sustainability thread through your studies, whatever you're majoring in.
