Green skills: a global imperative for Higher Education and graduate employability

Recruiters worldwide have delivered a clear verdict: academic institutions must proactively prepare graduates for a sustainability-driven workforce. According to Emerging’s exclusive GEURS 2025 report, drawing from a global survey of over 13,000 recruiters, an overwhelming 74.2% believe educational institutions hold primary responsibility for developing essential green skills among graduates. Despite this strong consensus, many higher-education providers continue to treat sustainability skills training as merely optional.

Sustainability is no longer a specialized field; it has become fundamental to industrial operations, governmental policy making, and workforce employability across sectors. Green skills encompass not only technical and analytical capabilities but also essential competencies such as adaptability, collaboration, problem-solving, and environmental policy awareness. They have transitioned from desirable to mandatory.

In the United Kingdom alone, between 2023 and 2024, recruiter demand for talent equipped with green skills rose dramatically by 46%. Yet, academic institutions managed to increase the supply of qualified talent by only 5.3% during the same period. Consequently, professionals equipped with sustainability skills currently enjoy a hiring rate 72% higher than the average workforce, underscoring the magnitude of this skills gap.

To provide deeper insight, Emerging’s data analysis combined GEURS recruiter survey responses with external benchmarks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals Index and OECD data. Using machine learning algorithms, four distinct recruiter profiles emerged, each shaped by their country’s unique economic, political, and social realities. This segmentation, complemented by a regional breakdown and industry-specific needs assessment, offers academic institutions a nuanced roadmap to better align their programs with global workforce expectations. While this article highlights select findings, much of the data remains exclusive to Emerging’s clients. This piece is the first in a three-part series exploring the future of sustainability in education and employment, each installment unpacking further actionable insights to help bridge the growing green skills gap.

What employers really want: the four global green hiring mindsets

The specialized sustainability seekers that prioritize expertise over broad collaboration

Recruiters in this profile, found in countries such as Sweden, South Korea, the Netherlands and Germany, place unusually strong emphasis on PhD-level sustainability training. Compared to other recruiter profiles, they clearly favor candidates with advanced academic expertise, suggesting a preference for highly specialized, research-focused professionals. They rank the highest on the SDG index suggesting that they could already have embedded sustainability training in their national curriculums. As a result, they appear at the upper edge for PhD-level sustainability training while placing minimal additional pressure on institutions to expand such programs, reflecting confidence that their current academic systems already meet these needs.

With regard to the green skills recruiters seek, their expectations raise a few contradictions. While they call for elite academic credentials, they also rank communication, collaboration, and adaptability as the most valuable green skills for tomorrow’s workforce. These soft skills are more commonly linked to cross-functional and applied roles rather than narrowly specialized ones. At the same time, they show relatively little interest in broader technical, policy, or management training.

Their engagement with academic institutions also remains limited. Across nearly every area of university-industry collaboration, from curriculum co-design and innovation exchange to hands-on training and startup mentorship, their involvement is minimal. Their main focus appears to be recruitment, not long-term partnerships or program development.

This disconnect suggests that many of these countries may already have strong sustainability foundations built into their education systems and corporate practices. As a result, recruiters are less concerned with broad upskilling and more focused on finding a select group of highly qualified individuals who can bring niche expertise and strong interpersonal capabilities to well-established structures.

The business first recruiters that see institutions as engines for economic growth

Recruiters from countries like France, the United States and China show the lowest support for the idea that universities should lead green skills training. Instead, they lean toward corporate-led upskilling, particularly in areas tied to policy and management. Sustainability is seen less as a standalone discipline and more as a compliance-driven function integrated into broader business operations. Green skills are valued, but framed within a strategic, organizational context rather than a technical or environmental one.

Despite this, recruiters in this group are far from disengaged. In fact, they express some of the strongest interest in university partnerships, but with a very specific focus. Their top priorities include industry-integrated curricula, regional economic development, support for entrepreneurship, and joint research and innovation centers. These partnerships are not about co-developing sustainability pedagogy. They are about using universities as engines for private-sector growth.

This reflects a pragmatic approach. Academic institutions are not seen as the primary providers of sustainability education, but as valuable collaborators when their involvement advances corporate innovation, competitiveness, and economic objectives. In these mid to high SDG-performing countries, sustainability is important, but business outcomes come first.

The green innovation collaborators where recruiters envision campuses as climate innovation hubs

Recruiters in nations like the UAE, Brazil, Mexico and Morocco exhibit the strongest expectation that universities actively develop green skills, particularly emphasizing environmental knowledge areas such as climate science and ecology. Beyond technical expertise, they prioritize collaboration models rooted in community engagement, public-facing sustainability initiatives, and applied green technology solutions. Institutions here are seen as key innovation hubs, driving large-scale projects with visible societal and ecological impact. High scores across measures like startup incubation, R&D collaborations, and mentorship programs reflect a broader strategy: aligning university efforts with national priorities focused on climate adaptation, ecological challenges, and sustainable economic growth, especially in mid-low SDG nations.

The partnership-driven modernizers where collaboration fuels green economic progress

Recruiters from emerging economies dominate this profile with countries such as India and South Africa. They hold above-average expectations that universities provide foundational green skills training. A defining priority here is adaptability and continuous learning, qualities seen as essential in fast-changing sustainability landscapes. This group consistently scores highest on all university-industry collaboration metrics, strongly favoring partnerships that integrate sustainability into curricula, promote joint innovation projects, and modernize industries. For these recruiters, universities are central not only to developing future-proof green talent but also to enhancing technological capacity and national economic competitiveness.

Green skills aren’t one-size-fits-all, even within the same region

While the cluster analysis outlines four distinct recruiter mindsets globally, mapping these clusters regionally reveals how economic models and policy environments influence expectations around green skills, sometimes reinforcing global trends, other times challenging them.

Green skills priorities vary not only across continents but within regions, reflecting different economic models, policy landscapes, and workforce needs. In much of Western and Central Europe, employers lean toward the Specialized Sustainability Seekers profile, where sustainability is treated as a high-level, research-driven domain. However, some break from this trend. Their recruiters align more closely with the Business First mindset, favoring institutions that serve economic growth through entrepreneurship, compliance-driven upskilling, and strategic business partnerships. The same holds true for North America and Oceania where sustainability training is seen as important but firmly embedded within private-sector priorities.

Asia reveals even more variation. Certain nations follow a Business First approach, prioritizing corporate-led skill development. In contrast, recruiters from the same region show more of a Partnership-Driven Modernizers profile, where institutions are expected to deliver broad-based sustainability education and form deep collaborations with industry. Other employers value both specialized technical knowledge and soft skills like communication and advocacy, reflecting a hybrid expectation of sustainability talent.

In Latin America and the Arab world, the Green Innovation Collaborators profile dominates. In these countries institutions are seen as vital engines for climate tech, ecological innovation, and public-facing sustainability initiatives. These nations expect visible, mission-driven projects that align with national climate goals and regional development strategies.

Elsewhere in emerging economic countries recruiters align with the Partnership-Driven Modernizers profile. Here, institutions play a central role in equipping graduates with foundational green skills and engaging in collaborative efforts to modernize industries, close skills gaps, and strengthen economic resilience.

It’s time to align with what employers really want

As Emerging’s data analysis reveals, recruiters worldwide are not aligned in how they view the role of institutions in bridging the green skills gap. Some want elite specialization, others prioritize innovation and public engagement, while many are calling for agile, collaborative partnerships that future-proof entire industries.

What’s clear is that institutions can no longer treat sustainability education as optional or peripheral. But there is no single model. Success lies in understanding the nuances of local recruiter priorities.

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