Human population growth: A need to raise awareness in our university curricula

Background/Question/Methods

As the world’s population passed the 7 billion mark last October, we were reminded of the tremendous impact that a growing human population has on our planet’s natural resources. Previous research has shown that the university professorate is generally knowledgeable of human population dynamics. Unfortunately, many university students do not possess this basic knowledge and therefore may be unaware of the environmental problems that may result with uncontrolled human population growth. Because of the disparity in this awareness at the educator and student levels, we are concerned that human population does not have a strong enough presence in university curricula. To address this concern, we conducted an internet survey of natural and social science educators via prominent listservs of several professional societies from September through December of 2011. A total of 755 individuals completed the survey, responding to questions assessing their knowledge of human population dynamics as well as the extent to which this material is addressed in the courses that they teach.

Results/Conclusions

Most respondents were either students (28.2%) or academics (63.2%) who generally demonstrated excellent knowledge of human population dynamics. While estimates of current total global population ranged from 7 million to 10 trillion, removing outliers (N = 8) showed an estimate of 6.9 billion (±7.9 × 10⁸). Only 39.2% of survey respondents considered human population growth to be one of the three most concerning environmental issues facing the world today.  Approximately 67% of respondents were involved in teaching, of which 91.8% were post-secondary educators. While 96.0% of respondents believe that human population growth should be included in curricula at the university level, only 67.9% discuss this issue in their courses. Reasons for not including human population in their classes vary, including time constraints and irrelevancy. Because exponential human population growth is so intertwined with many issues in both the natural and social sciences, we believe it is imperative that an awareness of these issues be included in the university pedagogy.