Sustainability and institutional governance in higher education - How do global rankings and quality assurance measure university’s SDGs in Asia?

• In Event: Comparative Studies in Education (I)

Proposal

1. Introduction
With this growing and expanding mission of higher education, there is an increasing demand among HEIs and their stakeholders for a data-driven analysis of HE and its social impacts. Internally, HEIs need such analysis to strengthen decision-making processes and foster strategic development. Externally, stakeholders demand data on these institutions’ performance to ensure quality and value for money (Kaiser, Melo, & Hou, 2022).‘New’ policy issues, such as sustainability, social impact, and responsibility, which have reshaped the landscape of global higher education, emerged on the political and public agendas in varying contexts. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are expected to respond to these ‘new’ challenges and trends (Loukkola, Peterbauer, and Gover 2020).
Demonstrating a commitment to sustainability is becoming essential for the world's higher education institutions. Two quality assessment instruments, global rankings and quality assurance are expected to respond to this global trend and measure university SDGs’ commitment. In 2019, Time Higher Education(THE) published the first global ranking titled “THE Impact Ranking” to assess universities against the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With tables for each of the 17 SDGs, THE impact ranking provides an opportunity to highlight the work universities are doing for global, and local society, and campuses. In 2022, “QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2023” was published, aiming to assess the environmental and social impact of 700 universities around the world. Despite global rankings, quality assurance as a policy instrument is being planned to include SDGs in standards schemes globally and in Asia. In 2019, one of the INQAAHE funding scheme projects proposed the “indicators to embed the SDGs into institutional quality assessment. Therefore, the presentation aims to explore SDGs measures according to global ranking and quality assurance in order to realize how QA agencies and universities in Taiwan respond to SDGs and integrate the issues into institutional governance.

2. Literature review
Emergence of New Ranking Systems
A big boom in university rankings is a manifest phenomenon in higher education in the 21st century. University global rankings have existed for almost two decades since the publication of the Shanghai ranking in 2003, and currently more than 20 global rankings, including the QS, the Shanghai ranking and THE ranking, have strongly impacted and dominated the development of global higher education system. With a shift of focus from transparency, accountability and management information systems in the initial phase to marketization and mediatization in recent years, as a result of phenomena, global rankings now play ‘a central role in the consciousness of
higher education as policy targets and as talking points’ (Scott, 2013, p. 121).
Given the fact that university rankings have become an important benchmark for global competitiveness, the standards and indicators designated by ranking systems not only impacted national policy making and institutional behaviours but also reshaped higher education systems (Hazelkorn, 2019). As Hazelkorn and Gibson (2017) argued, ‘there is no such thing as an objective ranking. Reaction is sometimes purposively discreet, but overall ignorance is difficult to sustain’.

Role of quality assurance and sustainability
For the past two decades, most nations have developed a national quality assurance system with a set of quality indicators to review universities externally. Driven by the UN SDGs 2030, the quality standards framework started to turn into be more mission-oriented, with new focuses on sustainability and inclusiveness at institutional and programme accreditation. In response, universities in Asia are encouraged to take advantage of institutional research and make great efforts to showcase their uniqueness and features, to facilitate the match between educational objectives and specific institutional missions and visions (Hou 2016). In 2022, Higher Education Evaluation & Accreditation Council (HEEACT), a national accreditor in Taiwan starts to include the concept of “sustainability” into the new cycle of institutional accreditation in 2023. At the same time, several universities in Taiwan are advised to respond to SDGs 2030 due to a new QA approach.

3. Methodology
The study adopts mixed methods for data collection, including document analysis and and semi-structured interviews. First, the study analyzes the 46 sustainability reports by Taiwan universities listed on the THE impact ranking 2022 by using NVivo software instrument for content analysis. Second, semi-structured interviews over SDGs implementation, university governance and quality measures in four selected universities and QA agencies and employers were conducted to collect their opinions and perceive the practices taken by different sectors. Up to present, there were 18 interviewees, including 11 senior leadership, 5 QA administrators and global rankers and two employers. All interviews were transcribed verbatim. To facilitate data analysis, and avoid preconceived ideas or bias, all respondents are given a shortened code in terms of backgrounds and position.

4. Major findings and conclusion
There are several major findings. First, SDGs has attracted quality assurance agencies’ attention and integrated them into standards framework at institutional accreditation. Through an external review, universities are advised to review SDGs content carefully and integrate the most relevant and key SDGs into institutional long-term strategies plans. In terms of SDGs interpretation and related standards development, self-funding QA agencies have shown greater adaptability and resilience than the national accreditor. Second, given that the characteristics of four case universities differ, top-down management model is adopted by top research university and public university of technology, interestingly, the selection of SDGs heavily depends on their research productivities and the relevance. On the contrary, the religious affiliated institution tends to apply a mission-oriented model to support SDGs implementation, in other words, SDGs has been completely embedded into university mission and vision as an integral part of university governance; private university tends to take advantage of a bottom-up mode by engaging teachers and students in curriculum reform. Finally, SDGs collaborations between universities and industries starts to emerge. The study discovered that global rankers and quality assurance agencies are inspired to rethink new standards and indicators in order to actually measure university social impacts. Moreover, universities agree that the SDGs measures will likely lead to a healthy higher education classification system.

Author

• Angela Yung Chi Hou, National Chengchi University