Climate Education
Universities Respond to the Climate Crisis in the Classroom
August 22, 2025
Universities across the United States are recognizing that climate literacy, which was once considered a niche elective, is becoming a foundational competency for all graduates. No longer relegated to environmental science majors, climate and sustainability education are being woven into general education curricula to equip more students across all disciplines with the knowledge and skills to navigate a warming world.
Early Adopters and Their Models
The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is leading this shift. Beginning with the Fall 2024 cohort, UC SD introduced its Climate Change Education Requirement, which mandates that all undergraduates take a course featuring at least 30% climate-related content, encompassing science, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, and a project component tailored to each discipline (e.g., literature, engineering). This initiative affects approximately 7,000 students per graduating class.
Shortly thereafter, Arizona State University (ASU) launched “General Studies Gold” in Fall 2024, a revamped general education model including a mandatory three-credit sustainability course for every incoming student. This ensures that sustainability is no longer optional but embedded within the core curriculum.
As part of California’s largest public higher education system, San Francisco State University (SFSU) is transforming its longstanding environmental sustainability requirement. Starting in Fall 2025, all students must complete a course under the newly redesigned Environmental Sustainability & Climate Action (ESCA) requirement, which explicitly covers climate justice, making SFSU the first major public university to require climate-justice content for graduation.
Meanwhile, UC Davis is developing a proposed Climate Crisis general education requirement aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 (Climate Action). The proposal, with over 530 endorsements from faculty, staff, and students, is being considered by the Academic Senate and could launch in fall 2026 for the class of 2030.
The Data: Adoption, Assessment, and Impact
Though relatively few universities have adopted institution-wide climate literacy mandates, momentum is undeniable. Traditionally, sustainability education in higher ed’ is centered around electives, minors, and certificates. Now, campuses increasingly see climate literacy as integral to all students’ learning.
But what exactly is “climate literacy”? Unlike the broader systems-focused sustainability literacy, climate literacy zeroes in on understanding climate science, societal and ecological impacts, and strategies for mitigation, adaptation, and justice. Many institutions use the AASHE STARS framework to benchmark learning outcomes and assessments in these domains.
Data from campuses reporting to AASHE STARS reveal that the median campus scores approximately 2.8 out of 8 on the Learning Outcomes indicator (AC-2), suggesting that while sustainability learning objectives exist in some programs, few span entire undergraduate populations. Similarly, the median on the Sustainability Literacy Assessment indicator (AC-6) stands at around 2 out of 4, indicating that while assessments are deployed, they are not yet comprehensive.
To put it more simply, most U.S. colleges say they teach some sustainability-related topics, but when it comes to teaching climate science and solutions to all undergraduates — and actually testing what students have learned — very few universities are doing it thoroughly.
But student demand is further fuelling the trend for more. In fact, 48% of prospective applicants would choose a more sustainable university over a top-100 ranked one, while 88% of current students expect sustainable development to be integrated into their learning experience.
Moreover, requiring sustainability coursework yields measurable learning gains. At Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo), students who completed three or more sustainability-related courses answered 68.42% of literacy questions correctly, about eight percentage points higher than the campus average. This is a strong indicator that repeated engagement, not just a single course, enhances competency.
Why Universities Are Making the Change
Universities cite several compelling reasons for embedding climate literacy into graduation requirements. First, it promotes career readiness, seeing as climate risk is now relevant across most professions. Lawyers must grapple with climate-related regulations; architects design for resilience; business leaders must manage with sustainability issues, the medical profession with changing instances of disease, even insurance brokers have had to learn to assess risk on a whole new level due to extreme weather. UCSD’s approach, which allows discipline-specific projects, makes climate learning immediately relevant and employable.
Second, climate literacy bolsters civic competence. It also fosters informed public discourse and support for effective policies, which are outcomes associated with universities’ civic missions.
Third, these requirements reinforce the credibility of institutional commitments and reputation. For example, the University of Richmond and Cornell explicitly make sustainability education a core part of their climate action frameworks, linking academic requirements with operational carbon neutrality targets and strategic planning. These efforts ensure that climate goals transcend operational changes, rooting them in the knowledge, skills, and values developed across the student body.
Lastly, by prioritizing climate equity and justice, universities embed moral clarity. SFSU’s ESCA requirement explicitly addresses the disproportionate impact of climate change on marginalized groups, urging students to understand not just scientific problems, but also the power dynamics at play.
Barriers to Wider Implementation
Despite clear progress, several significant obstacles still hinder the widespread adoption of institution-wide climate literacy at U.S. universities. First, most campuses still lack formal, graduation-level climate literacy requirements, meaning that many students complete their degrees without any structured exposure to climate science or sustainability principles beyond their majors or elective courses.
Second, even where coursework exists, robust assessment methods remain rare. Few universities conduct comprehensive pre- and post-testing across entire student cohorts to evaluate learning gains. While such longitudinal assessments can effectively measure knowledge gains, as demonstrated in fields like physics and sustainability studies, universities normally lack both the infrastructure and the incentive to implement them at scale.
Third, integrating climate content across diverse disciplines, ranging from business and social sciences to arts and health, is difficult due to a lack of faculty preparedness. Many instructors report feeling ill-equipped to teach climate-related topics, citing both limited expertise and a lack of relevant resources. In K–12 settings, which parallel higher education challenges, teachers express similar difficulties: many lack confidence in teaching about climate change and say high-quality, discipline-appropriate teaching materials are hard to find.
Moreover, faculty training and time constraints pose structural barriers. A Cornell study on active learning in higher education found that even when educators are motivated to adopt new pedagogical methods, 42.8% report they simply don’t have the time to redesign their teaching approaches. Translating that to climate literacy, faculty across disciplines need dedicated professional development, curriculum redesign support, and time — resources that many institutions struggle to allocate.
The Road Ahead for Climate Literacy in Higher Education
Nonetheless, the trajectory is clear. Just as computer literacy became a universal expectation in higher education during the late 20th century, climate literacy is rapidly becoming a baseline competency for the 21st century. Universities like UCSD, ASU, SFSU, UC Davis, and those exploring similar mandates are preparing students for citizenship in a changing world. If public university systems collectively adopt climate literacy mandates, we may soon see a generation of climate-informed graduates become the norm.
To help accelerate this shift, educators, students, and administrators can tap into free tools designed to make climate education both rigorous and accessible. Explore the EarthDay.org Education Resource Library for lesson plans, activities, and guides that can support the integration of climate literacy into any discipline. The resources are ready, and what’s needed now is the commitment to use them.
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