Perceived Contribution of General Education Curricula to the Sustainable Development Goals: A Four-Domain, Dual-Stakeholder Survey at the University of Ha’il

Abstract

This paper aimed to measure the perceived contribution of general education curricula to the Sustainable Development Goals at the University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, across four content-based domains: educational, social, environmental, and economic. Although higher education is increasingly recognized as a key setting for advancing Education for Sustainable Development, limited empirical evidence has examined how general education curricula contribute to sustainability across multiple content-based domains while simultaneously considering faculty and student perspectives. A cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical design was applied through a 40-item instrument, validated by an expert panel and administered to a stratified sample of 900 respondents (470 students and 430 faculty members) across eight colleges; overall reliability was high (Cronbach’s α = 0.968). Analyses comprised descriptive statistics, one-sample tests against the high-contribution benchmark, 95% confidence intervals, and a two-way analysis of variance with η2 effect sizes. Perceived contribution was high overall (M = 4.07), highest in the educational domain (M = 4.28, 95% CI [4.24, 4.32]) and lowest in the economic domain, the only domain within the moderate band (M = 3.49, 95% CI [3.45, 3.53]; t = −10.44, p < 0.001). Neither respondent type (η2 = 0.0002) nor college affiliation (η2 = 0.0046) produced significant differences. The findings support the value of a multi-domain and dual-stakeholder approach to evaluating sustainability contributions within general education curricula and identify the applied economic domain as a priority for curricular reinforcement in alignment with Saudi Vision 2030. The four domains represent a content-based classification of the sustainability areas examined and are not empirically confirmed as independent latent factors; confirmatory validation on an independent sample is the recommended next step.