Assessing criteria on sustainable campus development of public universities in Malaysia through content analysis

Abstract

Sustainability is no longer just a fiercely disputed topic with broad consequences in academia and society, it is also vital for organisations in a number of industries including higher education institutions (HEIs). However, the lack of implementation of Sustainable Campus Development (SCD) in universities jeopardised the continuation of the sustainable agenda towards achieving the sustainable goal. Therefore, this paper aim is to assess the criteria contributing to SCD among public universities in Malaysia through content analysis. A list of participating public universities in UI-GreenMetric Ranking (UI-GMR) was assessed. The web content of sixteen (16) websites was examined and any relevant PDF documents that were related to the university sustainability reports were also analysed. Five (5) numbers of universities were selected to present sustainable initiatives to fulfil sustainable development criteria hence achieving UI-GMR. The initiatives were compiled based on six (6) criteria listed in UI-GMR and a relation between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UI-GMR were also determined. Although the initiatives provided by universities vary from one another, there are similarities in contributing to sustainability by providing campus practices towards the sustainability. From the findings, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) has taken the sustainable development initiatives the most while Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has taken the least sustainable initiatives. Some limitations apply to the findings due to the established criteria obtained content from the websites without human validation and resulted to inadequate assessment and may be influenced by other causes such as technological difficulties and the degree of information transparency. Hence, additional analysis may be useful to obtain more robust data by incorporating other method which is through an in-depth face-to-face interview with sustainable campus leaders.