Sustainability Evaluation: Measurement of Dimensions in Accredited Universities in a Developing Country

Abstract

Due to the new paradigm of university education, universities must implement sustainability in their missionary functions and administrative areas to increase their reputation, obtain external financing and create a competitive advantage. For this reason, this research aims to propose a university sustainability evaluation model for accredited institutions, in the context of developing countries where the implementation of sustainability presents notorious lags. A measurement tool for student perception of university sustainability was built through a review, grouping of dimensions, expert testing, pilot testing, exploratory and confirmatory analysis. The survey was applied in nine accredited universities to 1.276 students of various semesters and professions. The review of the literature yielded various evaluative models on university sustainability. Thus, the theoretical results and the quantitative validation of the findings validated the constructs and as a result, the dimensions of the institutional framework, campus operations and missionary functions stood out with high statistical significance, evidencing the relevance of the measurement instrument. Therefore, these categories are considered central to the evaluation processes, just as greater emphasis should be placed on the dimensions referring to missionary functions. This research is innovative because it is one of the first evaluation models of university sustainability formulated from the perspective of the student in a developing country for institutions that must account for their progress in the implementation of sustainability, such as universities with high quality accreditation.

Sustainable university – Knowledge and technology transfer channels to enterprises

“…Higher Education Institutions sustainable initiatives and activities could take place in different areas (e.g., Fischer et al, 2015;Lozano et al, 2013): research, education, campus operations, community engagement/outreach, institutional framework, on-campus experiences, and assessment and reporting. Measurement methods of sustainable universities differ in typology, number of indicators and methodology of integrating sustainable development into university performance (Nejati & Nejati, 2013;Lozano et al, 2013;Nagy & Veresne Somosi, 2020;Gómez et al, 2023). Nagy et al (2022) considered 3 evaluation criteria of a sustainable university: sustainable strategy, sustainable operations/infrastructure and sustainable actions/education/research.…”