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V. R. Vargas et al.
United Nations has signalled the importance of education, including higher education, in contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals, as well as
achieving the 2030 Development Agenda (UN 2015).
In recent years, higher education institutions have been pressured to consider their
ethical investments, procurements and actions. In the United Kingdom, this trend has
been largely driven by students holding their universities to account and the universities then being concerned about their marketing profile for student recruitment. One
example in 2019 is the University of Manchester, where students staged a weeklong occupation in protest against the university’s £12 m investments in fossil fuels,
forcing it to bring forward its financial review (Wootton-Cane 2019). Indeed, half of
the UK public higher education institutions have divested from pension funds and
investment portfolios that include identifiable unethical operations (Taylor 2020).
Consequently, universities are having to think carefully about the stakeholders they
choose and ethically concerned stakeholders are careful about which higher education
institutions they wish to associate with.
Also, higher education institutions have developed and signed international
commitments to integrate sustainable development into their activities (Lozano et al.
2013). However, there is not yet coherence between international, national and organisational policy frameworks (for instance for the UK where policy frameworks exist;
Vargas et al. 2019b).
In addition to these changes, universities are currently seeking funding avenues
different from governmental ones (Godemann et al. 2014). Some universities are
organisations where the public and private sectors converge, and accountability is
linked to result measures (Schmidt and Günther 2016). In addition, Australasian,
European and US higher education is progressively seen as a significant sector in
the economy (Godemann et al. 2014). Therefore, some universities have developed
quasi corporate characteristics (Godemann et al. 2014).
These issues relate directly to the ways in which universities address the SDGs,
affecting their policies and implementation of procurement, estate management,
curricula, research, professional development training, community relations and
stakeholder networks. In other words, the SDGs affect every aspect of university
governance and operation, each representing a system of management.
Although leaders, academic and administrative staff, and students have started to
work towards the implementation of sustainable development in higher education
institutions, embedding it in the everyday practice of higher education is still facing
difficulties, especially in terms of systemic change (Dlouha et al. 2018). There are
different reasons for this that have been explored in the literature. One of the reasons
suggests that higher education institutions could be described as complex systems
and this makes driving change particularly difficult (Godemann et al. 2014). Studies
have shown that, arguably ‘developed’, education systems such as the UK, include
in their sustainable development policy frameworks a number of organisations with
different functions and interactions between them (Vargas et al. 2019a).
According to the UN and echoed in SDG 17, partnership work is crucial for
the implementation of sustainable development (UN 2015). There is evidence that
suggests that organisational change can be influenced by the pressure of stakeholders
V. R. Vargas et al.
United Nations has signalled the importance of education, including higher education, in contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals, as well as
achieving the 2030 Development Agenda (UN 2015).
In recent years, higher education institutions have been pressured to consider their
ethical investments, procurements and actions. In the United Kingdom, this trend has
been largely driven by students holding their universities to account and the universities then being concerned about their marketing profile for student recruitment. One
example in 2019 is the University of Manchester, where students staged a weeklong occupation in protest against the university’s £12 m investments in fossil fuels,
forcing it to bring forward its financial review (Wootton-Cane 2019). Indeed, half of
the UK public higher education institutions have divested from pension funds and
investment portfolios that include identifiable unethical operations (Taylor 2020).
Consequently, universities are having to think carefully about the stakeholders they
choose and ethically concerned stakeholders are careful about which higher education
institutions they wish to associate with.
Also, higher education institutions have developed and signed international
commitments to integrate sustainable development into their activities (Lozano et al.
2013). However, there is not yet coherence between international, national and organisational policy frameworks (for instance for the UK where policy frameworks exist;
Vargas et al. 2019b).
In addition to these changes, universities are currently seeking funding avenues
different from governmental ones (Godemann et al. 2014). Some universities are
organisations where the public and private sectors converge, and accountability is
linked to result measures (Schmidt and Günther 2016). In addition, Australasian,
European and US higher education is progressively seen as a significant sector in
the economy (Godemann et al. 2014). Therefore, some universities have developed
quasi corporate characteristics (Godemann et al. 2014).
These issues relate directly to the ways in which universities address the SDGs,
affecting their policies and implementation of procurement, estate management,
curricula, research, professional development training, community relations and
stakeholder networks. In other words, the SDGs affect every aspect of university
governance and operation, each representing a system of management.
Although leaders, academic and administrative staff, and students have started to
work towards the implementation of sustainable development in higher education
institutions, embedding it in the everyday practice of higher education is still facing
difficulties, especially in terms of systemic change (Dlouha et al. 2018). There are
different reasons for this that have been explored in the literature. One of the reasons
suggests that higher education institutions could be described as complex systems
and this makes driving change particularly difficult (Godemann et al. 2014). Studies
have shown that, arguably ‘developed’, education systems such as the UK, include
in their sustainable development policy frameworks a number of organisations with
different functions and interactions between them (Vargas et al. 2019a).
According to the UN and echoed in SDG 17, partnership work is crucial for
the implementation of sustainable development (UN 2015). There is evidence that
suggests that organisational change can be influenced by the pressure of stakeholders