Abstract
Higher education institutions have been steadily progressing towards the integration of sustainable practices in their university system. Consequently, an increasing number of these institutions have recognized their responsibility and are incorporating sustainability into their operations, and practices, following a holistic approach. Despite these efforts in the implementation, there are still many challenges to pursue sustainability. In the Spanish framework, there is a lack of studies that investigate sustainable development in higher education by considering all the dimensions. Especially, the efforts of the Spanish Universities in research have been scarcely analysed in detail. This study analyze how Spanish Public and Private Universities (SUE) are integrating sustainability into their institutions by the following dimensions: Research (based on a search strategy proposed by considering the social, economic and environmental perspective); Internationalization (participation in GreenMetrics ranking and European Framework projects), University Governance (Strategic Plans); Assessment and Reporting (Sustainability Plans) and Campus Operations (Green offices).The findings reveal that some institutions present a higher production of scientific activity on the topic (e.g. UAB), while others with less production are more specialized (e.g. UA). The commitment of the universities has increased over time but it varies greatly among different kind of universities, especially in favour of the public institutions. By analyzing the correlation between sustainability practice, it was found that there are high association between some of the variables i.e. sustainability plan and having a green office. However, this study clearly demonstrates that although SD is recognized as being very important to HEIs and society, it is not yet embedded in the whole system’s strategies, activities, and policies.
Highlights
ObjectivesConsidering the importance of SD, this paper analyses the development of research on this topic in the Spanish higher education institutions (HEIs), as well as their commitment, from 2008 through 2017
This section offers an overview of research activity in sustainability at Spanish higher education institutions (HEIs) and their commitment measured by dimensions such as Internationalization, University or governance and assessment and reporting and Campus Operations
The most productive university in this field is the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) with 342 documents (0.98% of their total production), Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) with 250 documents (1.61%), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) with 244 documents (1.77%), Universidad de Zaragoza (UNIZAR) with 226 documents (1.20%), Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) with 219 documents (1.36%), EHU with 217 documents (1.04%) and Universidad Santiago de Compostela (USC) with 203 documents (1.21%)
Summary
Considering the importance of SD, this paper analyses the development of research on this topic in the Spanish HEIs, as well as their commitment, from 2008 through 2017. The objectives of this study are two-fold: 1) How is research on SD carried out by HEIs? This question seeks to determine the main actors in the Spanish framework and the most specialized on the research on SD. This question analyses with different indicators how committed are Spanish Universities with sustainability, based on the following dimensions identified in the scientific literature (Chambers and Walker, 2016; Lozano et al, 2015): University Governance, Assessment and Reporting and Campus Operations. The other sections of the paper are organized as follows: Section 2 covers the sources and research methodology used.
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