EY has announced a collaboration with Hult International Business School to launch a fully accredited Masters in Sustainability. The course aims to expand climate literacy and sustainability and will be available to all 312,000 of EY’s employees, free of charge.
The new qualification’s launch comes after data from a recent EY survey found that nearly three quarters (74 percent) of EY’s employees want to have a positive impact on the environment and communities.
The EY Masters in Sustainability by Hult will be the first qualification of its kind and will help employees translate the skills learned into new innovative sustainability services for clients around the world.
The course is EY’s most recent qualification in collaboration with Hult after 2020’s virtual corporate Master of Business Administration (MBA) course, followed by Masters in Business Analytics in 2021.
Trent Henry, global vice chair at EY, says: “This new Masters is the first of its kind and it will help EY people tackle some of the most important issues organizations are currently facing. The exceptional EY experience is for EY people to build, and I am proud of the leading class learning opportunities that help them to build the careers they want, in a way that works for them.”
Mukul Kumar, chief innovation officer at Hult, stated: “Hult has been passionate about social and environmental sustainability and its intersection with the business for quite some time, having pioneered in teaching it as a core topic in our MBA program more than 10 years ago.
“Today, we are delighted to be collaborating with EY to educate its people on viewing sustainability as both a business challenge and a competitive opportunity. The customised curriculum of this innovative program efficiently upskills students in high growth areas for client work and is a differentiator in the talent marketplace. The more learners that engage with this practical, hands-on, sustainability curriculum, the sooner we get to a better working world.”
Whether EY can possibly enroll of its employees onto the course is debatable, though, not just through employee enthusiasm but also from a logistical point of view.
It’s more likely the new Master’s degree is a good marketing message coupled with a broad aspiration helping to maintain EY’s position as a sustainable business. Here EY has already earned its stripes, having last year become carbon negative in a major step towards becoming net-zero by 2025.
Ultimately the course sets an example for other companies to eventually follow suit and make the right steps towards a more sustainable future.
