Sustainability as an Emerging Paradigm in Universities

This article aims to review the perspective of sustainability adoption in universities through two dimensions: firstly, from the educational and research process, and second, from their global positioning in terms of the performance of their university campus. For this purpose, a bibliometric analysis was carried out, referring to publications dating from 2006 to 2020, using the terms Sustainability, green universities and curricular sustainability as search keywords. In addition, an analysis of eight global university rankings was made, gathering information from their official websites on their evaluation fields, indicators, and volume of Ibero-American universities cataloged. The result is that, since 2007, the number of publications on this topic has increased, showing that the participation of Latin American in publications is very low (3.69%). Furthermore, only 12% of Latin American universities are included in world rankings. Sustainability has hardly been integrated into university academic programs; likewise, it is observed that the traditional world ranking of universities mainly take into account factors related to teaching and research, without considering criteria related to sustainability. Moreover, it is essential to develop policies that encourage universities to develop sustainability strategies in their academic and institutional processes in general, as well as in the global university evaluation systems, in order to value sustainability adequately in both in academics, research and institutional performance.

Automated summary

This article reviews the adoption of sustainability in universities from two dimensions: educational and research processes, and the performance of their university campus. The findings show that sustainability has been hardly integrated into university academic programs, and the traditional world university rankings do not adequately consider sustainability criteria. Policies need to be developed to encourage universities to integrate sustainability strategies into their academic and institutional processes, as well as in the global university evaluation systems, in order to properly value sustainability.