Background (Introduction) Today to cope with the changing environmental conditions and the environmental problems, countries separate their budgets in to the solving these problems. But; the easiest way is that growing up sensible generation about environmental problems. Especially environmental education has an important role in order to realize this mission. Environmental Education has its origins in the 1960s.  Through the decade of the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Environmental Education movement grew rapidly. Education concerning environmental problems was recognized at the World Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro in 1972. These emergences are today evident in environmental education.
 
Purpose This study was conducted to understand university students’ attitude toward environment and environmental issues. Also it was examined whether attitude toward environment of students differ significantly based on their socio-economic status.
 
Sample For this study a sample of 225 student teachers was used. The sample composed of 143 girls and 82 boys. Participants included the sophomore students of Faculty of Education at Pamukkale University in Denizli, in Turkey. 
 
Design and methods For the purpose of this study, a survey composed of two section was given to sophomore students. In the first section of the survey, students were asked about demographics, in the second part they were given a scale to measure their attitudes toward environment and environmental issues. The reliability of Environmental Attitude Scale was found to be 0,81.
 
Results According to the results of this study; students’ attitude toward environment and environmental issues are not very high. Furthermore, environmental attitude of girls is higher than that of boys at a significant level. Mothers’ occupation cause significant differences on students’ attitude toward environment. Although student’s attitude toward environmental issues differs regarding age and number of siblings, attitude toward environmental issues doesn’t differ regarding father’s occupation, parents’ educational level, their house, families’ economic status and whether the students took lesson about environment before.
 
Conclusion To protect the environment, it is necessary to educate people as individuals who have environmental awareness and knowledge to environmental subjects. Environmental education has an important role in order to realize growing up sensible generation about environmental problems. Findings in this study may be interest to educators and have implications for development in Environmental Education in Turkey.