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This article aims to provide a perspective on sustainability reporting and performance management in the university sector making a case for increased accountability, improved (management of) performance and greater innovation in approach.

The author provides a personal perspective drawing on experience in sustainability standard setting and as a sustainability researcher, advisor and practitioner in the university sector and others.

The paper finds that university practice in sustainability reporting and performance management significantly lags other sectors and falls far short of optimising the potential of the sector to influence transformational change through knowledge transfer.

The paper suggests some areas for further research.

This article makes a case for increased sustainability performance management and reporting in universities arguing that it would lead to increased accountability and improved performance. It calls for social, environmental and economic sustainability to integrated into university processes. The paper has implications for university policy makers and regulators.

Little attention has been paid to the university sector in the sustainability reporting and social responsibility literature or indeed in recognised standards for sustainability reporting and management.

This paper explores stakeholder perceptions on the nature and extent of sustainability reporting on the websites of technical universities (TUs) in Ghana.

The authors collected data from the websites of the 10 TUs in Ghana and interviewed the stakeholders of the TUs. In analyzing the data, the authors used thematic analysis for the interview responses. The authors also adopted the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines and campus sustainability assessment tools for the presentation and analysis of the sustainability disclosures on the websites of the TUs.

The authors found that due to weak institutional coercions, there were limited disclosures on the websites of the TUs, which aimed at gaining stakeholders' legitimacy; the disclosures were more focused on organizational profile, governance and educational aspects of sustainability. To a large extent, while some external stakeholders such as parents, regulators and alumni appear to be less interested in the disclosures on the TU's websites, internal stakeholders such as employees (teaching and non-teaching staff) and students who frequently visited the TU's websites perceived limited reporting and were not impressed with the extent of sustainability disclosures on these websites.

The findings of this study are intended to assist policy-makers in the educational sector to appreciate the importance of sustainability reporting on their websites. The results of this study will assist higher educational institutions (HEIs) in increasing the success rate of sustainability implementation by overcoming the lack of sustainability disclosures on their websites. Thus, the results of this study have implications for sustainability implementations, particularly those in emerging economies and policy-makers of universities worldwide.

This study could provide two significant values. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study has explored stakeholder perceptions of sustainability reporting in implementing sustainability within the education sector. Second, the results were arrived at by combining stakeholder consultations with content analyses, which could be a good guideline for sustainability implementation in the educational sector of developing countries.

Despite the centrality of leadership to the successful transformation of universities toward sustainability, the literature on the role and practices of sustainability leadership in higher education remains poorly developed. To address this gap, this study aims to develop a conceptual model of sustainability leadership in higher education.

The study adopts the scoping review method to review, critique and synthesize relevant literature.

The resulting model of sustainability leadership in higher education proposes that sustainability leadership in higher education has the potential to transform university practices through reorientation and stewardship of the institutional mission and strengthening the commitment of stakeholders. Sustainability leadership has the potential to create a positive effect on a balanced set of performance indicators, as well as contributing to institutional and societal resilience in the longer term.

Sustainability leadership in higher education should be given prominence in its own right due to the unique organizational context of universities. This study synthesized the current discourse on sustainability leadership in higher education and its distinct attributes toward sustainable development.

According to the importance of higher education institutions (HEIs) in meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs), the purpose of this study is to analyze how sustainability was implemented in Ecuadorian higher education. The case study of the Universidad Técnica del Norte (UTN) process was analyzed to show the advantages of implementing projects with SD approaches.

This study includes an analytic-synthetic method. In the case study, a longitudinal-documentary method was used to analyze the projects implemented in the UTN. The primary source of information corresponds to reports, minutes, publications, interviews and surveys from the academic staff of UTN, which can be found in the Postgraduate Institute of the UTN archives.

Projects implemented at UTN facilitated the development of skills in the participating university community and influenced the general organizational development of the university. Likewise, the potential benefits of the projects in each of the components are highlighted, so that social learning and the development of skills in students and teachers have been facilitated, focusing on internationalization.

The population analyzed corresponds to Ecuadorian universities and technical institutes, however, access to information from all HEIs is limited, due to processing time and economic resources.

This study presents implications for representatives of higher education and policymakers at the national level since the positive aspects can be rescued to promote the sustainable performance of HEIs.

HEIs train ethical professionals capable of transforming the world. The study shows successful experiences that can be used by other HEIs to have a positive impact on society, providing a sustainable future. In addition, UTN has prioritized the initiative of the students in several activities.

The primary information for the case study comes from the experiences obtained during the international cooperation projects of the UTN. Positive findings and limitations have been identified, which are published with the purpose of contributing to the scientific community.

This paper aims to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices adopted among University of Sharjah (UOS) students toward sustainability efforts done by their university.

An online survey was emailed to students with the assistance of the UOS Sustainability Office. The survey consisted of four sections assessing knowledge, attitudes, practices and preferred media to obtain sustainability information. A total of 200 responses from male and female students, representing 4 levels of study in sciences and humanities colleges, were received. Research data is analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics (version 26). For assessing knowledge, eight items were developed to measure if the student knew about the university’s projects and activities in the field of sustainability. For assessing attitudes, six items were developed to indicate the level of agreement or disagreement toward main sustainability issues. For assessing practices, ten items were developed to measure the frequency of acting in a sustainable manner.

Survey results showed an advanced level of basic knowledge among university students regarding the programs and activities conducted by UOS, and a positive attitude toward these efforts and toward the importance of supporting sustainable practices. Most of the participating students disagreed with limiting the use of cars on campus – this may be because of a cultural aspect among young people in the Emirati society, who consider driving cars as an essential part of their daily life. Most students also indicated that they care about the behavior that supports sustainability in the university environment, such as rationalizing water consumption and using environment friendly products.

The study’s limitations are that it was applied to one university – UOS. The sample of the online survey was only 200 students from undergraduate students. Different universities may have their own sets of different environmental approaches, and because of this reason, university students may exhibit different levels of knowledge, attitude and practice toward sustainability in contrast to the findings from this study.

Findings from this research can give decision-makers a good picture of the university’s performance in accomplishing sustainability. The authors recommend that UOS sustainability communication programs should be more comprehensive, and not only limited to protecting the environment that some students perceive as the primary aspect of sustainability. These efforts must address all economic and social aspects emphasized by the United Arab Emirates 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is considered one of the first studies addressing sustainability efforts in Emirati universities and seeking to assess the level of student knowledge, attitudes and practices toward sustainability issues in the country. The study is crucial in providing better insights such as the level of knowledge, attitude and practices toward UOS sustainability performance. As found in this study, even with sufficient knowledge, students still lack the drive to convert them into actions. So, future research could investigate deeper into the barriers of converting sustainable knowledge and attitudes into practices. The results represent an added value to the research literature concerned with sustainability issues in the Arab world and the Middle East region. This paper will also contribute to the sustainability literature that will be benefited by other various organizations.

This study aims to evaluate the current state of sustainability education and research capacity at engineering faculties. More specifically, this research is intended to provide new and much-needed information about sustainability knowledge, teaching and research activities.

The first method used is a questionnaire survey completed by teachers and researchers about their activities dealing with sustainability and the second is based on a systematic literature review at the SCOPUS database for scientific publications on sustainability by Palestinian universities in the Palestinian context, and the number of publications in fields related to sustainability in Scopus indexed journals.

Some institutions include more sustainability topics in their teaching courses and research activities than others. The number of courses per teaching staff and department and the sustainability contents vary among the selected universities. Teaching activities focus on environmental sustainability, especially on energy, thermal and water efficiency. The number of Scopus indexed publications in fields related to sustainability in the past 20 years is low. The highest number of published papers was those focused on environmental sustainability.

This study has implications for university researchers and educators by identifying the gaps between the teaching and research conducted and the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. For policymakers, the study shows that the status of sustainability in higher education, mainly at engineering schools, is still in great need for universities’ and government’s support, for example, to increase the number of published papers, number of courses and master programmes addressing sustainability.

This paper provides a current status for integrating sustainability education and research at engineering schools. The output of this study can be useful for future research to analyse higher education institutions’ impacts on sustainable development.

This study aims to better understand the communication of sustainability by Canadian universities, specifically the use of websites, interactive features and sustainability plans.

A total of 95 Canadian universities were included in this study. The mixed-methods approach sought to capture the communication of sustainability via websites, the interactive features used, as well as to evaluate the quality of sustainability plans.

The study revealed that 67% of universities address sustainability on their websites. On average, universities offer three to four interactive features on their sustainability-related Web pages, and the average score of the quality of campus sustainability plans was 29 (out of 41).

This study does not investigate the extent to which interactive features enhance the involvement and participation in sustainability efforts or the extent to which the sustainability plans were put into practice by universities.

The findings assist with understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can enhance their sustainability communication via their websites to encourage interaction and engagement in campus sustainability. The findings can also help universities to enhance the effectiveness of sustainability plans.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to assess sustainability content and the interactive features on sustainability-related pages of Canadian universities’ websites. The quality of sustainability plans is also evaluated. The study informs the present understanding of communicating sustainability by Canadian universities and provides a basis for future investigations in HEIs in Canada and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to describe four phases for how universities have addressed a sustainability agenda and offer specific lessons for how and where experiences on one campus, the University of Colorado Boulder, have been met with success and other challenges. The authors offer general reflections for executing university‐wide sustainability initiatives with a central intent of illuminating central barriers against, and incentives for, a coordinated and integrated approach to campus sustainability.

The approach for arriving at four phases and a description of the University of Colorado Boulder is based on experiences from learning, teaching, and administering within universities–collectively for almost a century among the authors–and lessons from “war room” discussions.

Sustainability initiatives on campus may evolve through a series of phases labeled: grassroots; executive acceptance of the business case for sustainability; the visionary campus leader; and fully self‐actualized and integrated campus community. The University of Colorado Boulder, while a leader in many respects of sustainability (research, student activities, facilities management) has experienced serious challenges for coordination.

The four phases are a relatively novel contribution for the specific literature on sustainability education. Second, the tangible examples from University of Colorado Boulder demonstrate how coordination is difficult in these situations; these examples allow readers to better relate to and understand such challenges. Finally, the authors reflect on central issues according to three categories: self‐reflection, recommendations, and advantages.

Literature limited in scope regarding the incorporation of sustainability into engineering curriculum encouraged authors to look at the current approaches of universities to the integration of sustainability into university curricula. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the literature published and analyse the university secondary data (information published on the university websites and magazines and programme catalogues) to understand the current status of Australian universities regarding the integration of sustainability in engineering.

Articles and reports from different trustworthy sources have been analysed in this study. A text mining methodology was used to gather information from websites, magazines and programme catalogues.

Obtained information and data indicate that the universities are considering sustainability seriously with both internal and external stakeholders of universities working towards embedding sustainability in engineering curricula. Most of the Australian universities have successfully implemented sustainable engineering education and the rest are focussing on integrating sustainability into their engineering education curriculum.

This is the first review, which focusses on incorporating sustainability into the engineering education of Australian universities. However, considering current progress and also some drawbacks of the universities regarding the integration of sustainability into engineering curriculum, 15 future research questions have been developed, which should be considered to make the integration process more efficient and equip engineers who would be able to engage and tackle the environmental, personal, social and economic challenges of the twenty-first century.

This study aims to answer the research question: How to evaluate the structure of global university sustainability rankings according to the Berlin Principles (BP) framework.

The authors investigated two global sustainability rankings in universities, The UI green metric World University Ranking (WUR) and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE-WUR). The authors performed content analysis regarding their evaluation criteria and assessed both rankings using the BP framework.

Results show that there is still a gap to be filled regarding the specificity of global university sustainability rankings. Although the THE-WUR had a better performance in this research, there are several items for improvement, especially regarding the methodological procedures. There are structural differences, limitations and points for improvement in both rankings. Besides, it may not be possible to have a unique and more appropriate ranking, but one that can be more suitable for a contextual reality.

This study can be helpful for university managers when deliberating on the most appropriate ranking for their institutions and better preparing their higher education institutions for participating in sustainability-related rankings. Besides, it suggests possible improvements on the rankings’ criteria.

The authors shed light on challenges for improving the existing university sustainability rankings, besides generating insights for developing new ones. In a provocative but constructive perspective, the authors question their bases and understandings of being “the best university” regarding sustainability.

This is the first study that provides an in-depth analysis and comparison between two of the most important global university sustainability rankings.