European countries are likely to adopt a North American initiative that encourages students to consider the ethical performance of employers before they take up a job.
The ‘Graduation pledge of social and environmental responsibility’, which is supported by more than 100 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, asks students to ‘take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider’ after graduation – and to ‘try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work’.
Now its supporters are spreading the idea to the rest of the world, with an institution in Denmark likely to be the first to sign up in Europe.
Neil Wollman, a senior fellow at Manchester College Peace Studies Institute in Indiana, which began running the pledge scheme three years ago, said talks had begun with a teaching institution in Denmark, although a formal agreement had not yet been reached. An academic institution in the Philippines was also interested, he added.
Among institutions in the United States to have adopted the pledge are Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, Stanford and the University of North Carolina. A number of high schools are also involved.
In some institutions the pledge is a formal part of graduation ceremonies, while at others only certain faculties are involved. In each case students are left to define what ‘responsibility’ means.
Wollman said there was plenty of evidence of graduates having rejected employment with a company as a direct result of making the pledge, and of ‘working to make changes once on the job’.
He cited the case of a graduate who had helped to convince an employer to refuse a chemical weapons-related contract.
Wollman added that in most of the institutions taking part, half of the students made the pledge, receiving a credit card-sized version of the two-sentence pledge to remind them of its tenets.
A pledge website contains links to what are described as socially responsible jobs and internships.