Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education Rankings: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Internationally Comparable Indicators

Abstract

As more higher education institutions strive to embed sustainable development principles in their teaching, it becomes increasingly important to identify indicators that can measure institutional contribution in a meaningful and internationally comparable manner. This paper shows that existing sustainability rankings, such as the UI Green Metric and THE Impact ranking, have paid relatively little attention to indicators on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In a quest to develop such indicators for U-Multirank—the multi-dimensional transparency and ranking tool—we reviewed the literature, consulted experts, and ran a survey amongst practitioners. This article summarises opportunities and challenges for developing internationally comparable ESD indicators in the higher education sector, discussing indicator relevance, validity, and feasibility. The results suggest that (i) ESD indicators are considered highly relevant by diverse stakeholders; (ii) the majority of HEIs surveyed are planning to collect ESD data within 3 years, signalling good prospects for data feasibility; (iii) the ESD indicators proposed so far still lack criteria that would allow one to sufficiently identify and compare these indicators across countries, inhibiting indicator validity. At least three potential definitions are used by HEIs. The results of this paper can contribute to the discussion on identifying appropriate criteria for the development of ESD indicators and their use in international rankings.

Infrastructure, curriculum delivery and service provision improvements made by the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka in transforming education towards sustainability in the midst of economic crisis, in post-covid 19 pandemic period.

“…Further, the library has developed a number of video tutorials and instructional tools to assist the library users, enabling them to utilize the resources efficiently and effectively. The library orientation video, guides on how to find books in the library, how to search library catalogue, how to find reference materials, how to connect to virtual private network, and how to access library databases through Shibboleth login are few examples of instructional videos available in the library [7,8].…”

A 5 pillars approach to the sustainable development goals performance and reporting in Portuguese higher education institutions. Proposal for an applied framework

“…To define these topics, the methodology of Nardo et al (2021) was considered, but especially the main keywords associated with an SDG in the context of an HEI according to the THE_IR (2022b) methodology. As stated by Veidemane (2022), the creation of internationally comparable but locally significant indicators enhances the evaluation of progress and encourages HEIs to learn from each other.…”

Sustainable Learning, Cognitive Gains, and Improved Attitudes in College Algebra Flipped Classrooms

“…On a larger scale, HEIs play a key role in sustainability; again like the two sides of a coin, by promoting both ESD as well as SLE. On the one side of the coin, by facilitating and designing curricula that center around sustainability, i.e., ESD, HEIs contribute crucially to creating a sustainability mindset among their members, including faculty, administrative personnel, and, in particular, the student body, where a new generation of future leaders would emerge [21][22][23][24]. On the other side of the coin, by improving their didactics and pedagogy, i.e., SLE, HEIs prepare current and prospective learners with transversal competencies that are necessary for tackling not only personal, a smaller-level, challenging circumstances but also global, a larger-level, economic, social, and environmental challenges [25][26][27][28][29][30].…”