Youth, Society and Sustainable Futures BA

Course overview

This 3-year BA (Honours) programme is both theory driven, and practice based. It adopts a relational approach to youth studies which considers young people’s relations with the self, others, society, nature and technology. This approach helps us to investigate issues and challenges that young people face and is especially useful for education in sustainability and examining what forces and factors support or hinder young people from having sustainable futures. Students will also benefit from research and expertise within the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, housed within the same department they are studying in at IOE.

The programme will enable you to examine the lives of young people in diverse ways and help them to act responsibly in the face of challenging real-world problems. It also aims to support you in understanding the notion of ‘futures’ through thinking about the nature and implications of your own choices and by developing analytical skills. You will be able to explain the notions of ‘futures’ using a variety of methods such as text, image and numbers and will also learn how to manage change and maintain ethical integrity. Additionally, you will develop critical, innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives, understand the importance of diverse opinions and develop professional skills as advocates of social action.

The course embraces multi-disciplinarity, ethical, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous approaches to sustainability and encourages students to bring to discussion the experiences of young people from different countries and regions. As a result, it supports you in developing a critical stance towards futures thinking rather than a rhetorical one.

This unique and future-focused Youth Studies programme addresses issues facing young people aged 15-24. Reflecting the IOE's position as the world-leading faculty of education and social research, this degree aims to be a trailblazer in educational innovation on issues surrounding youth and the factors that may enable or constrain them from having sustainable futures. It considers young people’s relations with the self, others, society, nature and technology and critically examines the UN SDGs and other key developments in sustainability debates, both theoretical and practical.

The English language level for this programme is: Level 2

The foundation of your career

As this is a new degree for 2025 there is no graduate destination data to draw on from previous years. However, the programme has been designed to equip you with skills to help prepare you for careers in areas such as:

• Local and international youth organisations
• Other relevant NGOs
• Youth state services (youth advocacy, youth ministries, youth planning, education and social policy, international development, youth campaigns, security agencies)
• Youth settings (youth clubs, leisure facilities, museums, sustainability projects, green economy projects, social enterprise)
• Youth leadership and participation initiatives
• Youth political representation initiatives
• Education sector, including schools and FE

And with additional qualifications:

• youth social work
• Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
• Youth rehabilitation services
• Hospitals

Graduates may also wish to proceed to graduate study at UCL and elsewhere.

Employability

The programme is cross-disciplinary, including elements of sociology, psychology, criminology, environmental education, health and philosophy. This will enable and challenge you to critically engage with the complexities of knowledge. The course will also improve your employability through embedded employability skills and three “soft” pathways that students may curate through the choice of available optional modules or just follow a general pathway determined by their own free choice of options. The three soft pathways include:

• Pathway 1: Working in Youth Communication and Leisure Settings
• Pathway 2: Working in International Organisations and other NGOs
• Pathway 3: Working in state funded youth services

Students will be able to access a variety of opportunities to consider how to have more sustainable futures through visits, invited speakers and projects based on real life problems.

Students will become data empowered by considering the impact of new technologies and social media on young people and through data handling during study.

This programme addresses the UCL pillars of employability by providing students with specific work-associated knowledge and employability skills needed for a projected growth in youth related services, the social care trajectory and the “green and clean” youth related sector. It does this through exposure to modules such as Youth and the Green Economy and Youth and Consumerism for example. It also uses the "Working with Young People" and Placement modules to prepare students for work in youth voluntary and faith related organisations, youth state supported services or youth policy and planning organisations.