NIn Giordano and Jacob Mayer, a climate and environmentally conscious life is important, even later in their job. You live in a flat share with two other students, if possible they exchange or share many everyday objects and clothes.
31-year-old Giordano and 22-year-old Mayer eat mostly vegetarian or vegan food and are committed to sustainable agriculture and active democracy. Both live on the Birkenfeld environmental campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences and are studying Nonprofit and NGO Management for a bachelor’s degree. The campus is idyllically situated near the Saar-Hunsrück nature park, in the triangle between Trier, Kaiserslautern and Saarbrücken.
Her training deals with questions such as: How can non-profit organizations and associations become more visible to the public with their work? How can they structure themselves more effectively and better reach and recruit potential volunteers? Giordano and Mayer are examples of a growing group of students for whom such focal points are important in their education.
If you look at the search window of the “Hey, Studies” platform with various terms such as nature and environmental protection, renewable energies, energy and environmental management, waste management and sustainability, the search engine lists more than 508 courses at state and private universities and technical colleges. If you just take the word “sustainability”, they are even knapp 1200.
There seems to be hardly any subject area that can do without this addition. Surveys like the regularly updated one Shell Youth Study also show that environmental protection and sustainability are important to more and more young people, not only in everyday life, but also when choosing a career.
Universities and technical colleges have reacted to this in recent years and have focused more on climate protection and sustainability in many of their offers. The Leuphana University in Lüneburg, which was the first university in Germany to set up a faculty for sustainability, is regarded as a trendsetter and role model. Corresponding courses of study are bundled there.
Elsewhere, for example at the RWTH Aachen University, conventional courses such as raw materials engineering have been converted into sustainable raw material and energy supply. New courses such as biosphere reserve management at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development were added.
This fits with the results of a study by the Center for Higher Education Development: The researchers examined how the differentiation and thematic focus of courses changed between 2014 and 2019. The analysis does not refer specifically to sustainability, but shows a trend towards clear more diversity and adaptation to new social developments.
Some of the universities are also consistently climate-neutral themselves and live what they teach in a practical way. This also applies to the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld. According to the current international UI Greenmetric Ranking of world’s most sustainable universities the campus ranks 6th (out of 1050) and 1st in Germany.
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The 2,100 students from 80 countries learn in buildings whose roofs are fully equipped with solar modules. Many of the campus halls of residence have green roofs. More than 50 percent of the electricity requirement is covered by solar energy. Toilet flushes use rainwater. Energy and heat also come from a neighboring woodchip power plant.
Some buildings use geothermal energy for heating and cooling. The new buildings, on the other hand, were built as highly insulated, so-called passive houses, which rely on natural heat sources such as solar radiation and waste heat from electrical devices.
Malika Arstan, who studies environmental and business administration and came to Germany from Kazakhstan, likes that too. She particularly likes the well thought-out water management and the promotion of biodiversity on campus – with restricted areas for frogs and toads.
“In Kazakhstan, climate and environmental protection are still in their infancy,” says Arstan. “There is a government program specifically for water management, which is so important, but that could be more ambitious.” It is all the more important for the 21-year-old to learn more about it. That’s why she wants to do a master’s degree in Birkenfeld after her bachelor’s degree.
Klaus Helling, Professor of Business Administration and Environmental Management and currently Dean of the Department of Environmental Economics/Law, lists what the students themselves contribute to environmental protection and sustainability. “They plant small plots of land and harvest fruit and vegetables, they run a student sustainability office, a clothing exchange, regularly organize vegan breakfast groups and a cargo bike rental service,” he says. “And anyone who is interested will be instructed on how to install their own mini solar power plant.”
The only major shortcoming from the point of view of many students: The rail connection to the main campus of the university in Trier is so miserable that many of them and university employees are dependent on the car.
This is different at the Brandenburg University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde (HNEE): The regional train connections, especially between the city of 40,000 inhabitants and Berlin, are good. The HNEE is also certified climate-neutral and is peacefully located in the countryside.
The university of applied sciences, founded in 1992, focused exclusively on “green” subjects such as nature conservation and sustainable forest management from the very beginning. Over the years, a number of other German and English language courses such as organic farming and marketing, forest information technology, global change management or biosphere reserves management (biosphere reserve management) have been added.
From the university campus you can almost see the edges of the Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve with its protected beech forests and extensive organic farming. “The young people who apply to us all want to improve the world in one way or another – that was the case long before the Fridays for Future movement took off,” emphasizes university president and sustainability scientist Matthias Barth . And similar to the Environmental Campus Birkenfeld, Eberswalde also attracts students who consciously and gladly want to learn in a more rural area, says Barth.
Six applicants for every place
The HNEE is well networked with organic farming, nature and environmental protection associations and organizations in the region. Many students are future organic farmers or foresters, so even during their training they can make contact with possible future workplaces.
However, says Barth, the students did not only come from the Berlin-Brandenburg region. About 40 percent come to Eberswalde from the other federal states and ten percent from abroad.
Barth reports that there is a large influx of applicants for some courses, such as the international Master’s course in Global Change Management: there are six applicants for every place on the course. Last fall, 30 students from 15 nations enrolled.
The Master’s course in Biosphere Reserve Management, which is also in English, is also international and, according to the university, the only one of its kind in Germany. The students come from countries such as Jordan, various African and South American countries, France and Germany.
Many have completed their bachelor’s degree in natural sciences or engineering. Saleem Haddad, for example, came to Eberswalde a few years ago after graduating as an engineer.
The 30-year-old says that his homeland of Jordan is struggling with major problems in the drinking water supply and, overall, far too little is happening there in terms of nature conservation. He appreciates the clearly more structured handling of the topic in Germany, he says.
Brilliant job prospects for the Fridays-for-Future generation
The course, which only started in 2020, is already in good international contact with various universities, NGOs and environmental protection associations. “Although Corona made it difficult for us to start, paradoxically, the pandemic also helped us to network very quickly,” says Erik Aschenbrand, professor at HNEE and co-designer of the course.
“Because many potential cooperation partners from all over the world were able to take part in the video meetings, which were easy to organize. So the lockdowns have brought us even closer together.”
The job prospects for them Generation „Fridays for Future“ are good – at least that’s the impression it makes if you look around in relevant job portals such as sustainablejobs.de. There you will find a wide range of opportunities for different disciplines: be it in the education sector of a national park, as a fully qualified lawyer with an animal protection organization or as a sustainability officer for an industry association.
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