Reconceptualizing the higher education-sustainable development nexus

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have been intensifying their engagement with sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in recent years. Institutions are increasingly using the framework to map their activities – taught courses, publications, public engagement etc - and to actively align their activities. This emphasis has been further incentivised by the emergence of sustainability-related international rankings, such as the Times Higher Education impact ranking, Greenmetric and most recently QS Sustainability. From the perspective of the SDG framework, the higher education sector has regained renewed prominence, after its absence in the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as both a goal in itself and the driver for all the other goals (Chankseliani and McCowan 2021).

However, despite this apparent synergy and positive momentum, there remain some problematic elements of the relationship. First, there is continuing debate as to whether the concept of sustainable development can live up to its promise as a ‘win-win’ for social and environmental challenges, or whether its benign exterior may end up masking continuing socio-economic inequalities within and between nations, and through its accommodation with economic growth the inevitable depletion of natural resources and destruction of the ecosystem. Second, there has been insufficient attention to the ways in which HEIs link in with society and environment, leading to overly simplistic ideas about generating positive impact. Third, despite the explicit attention to the SDGs and motivation amongst university leadership, staff and students, structural dimensions and contemporary trends in the sector are constraining their effectiveness in practice, in particular marketisation and status competition (McCowan 2019).

This panel aims to provide an in-depth exploration of these complexities. It brings together four papers providing fresh theorisation, critical engagement and empirical perspectives on the notion of sustainable development, the role of higher education and the experience of institutions in diverse contexts. The papers assess the diverse ways in which higher education can engage with sustainability and the SDGs, the theoretical frames through which we can interpret the relationship, the political dynamics at the international level governing those interactions and perspectives from institutions on how they navigate them.

The panel uncovers some of the powerful critiques of sustainability, while at the same time exploring ways in which the notion can be a generative space for transformation towards planetary justice. It acknowledges the deeply problematic colonial roots of the contemporary global systems, and nation-states, and the need to challenge notions of sustainability that end up ‘sustaining’ patriarchy, racism and other forms of hierarchy and inequality (Shields 20203, Stein et al 2023). According to authors such as Jimenez and Kabachnik (2023), we need to ‘hospice’ modernity, seeking a radical break with the paradigm of expropriation, exploitation and accumulation that has led to human suffering and environmental breakdown. There are also concerns around ‘greenwashing’, with environmentally-friendly policies serving as a smokescreen for the continuing of global capitalism for the benefit of the few; in this way, HEIs have at times promoted their green credentials as a way of attracting prospective students, without any deeper shifts.

Nevertheless, despite these powerful critiques, all may not be lost with the notion of sustainable development. While the concept is vague and susceptible to co-optation, it can provide an important territory on which universities and society can debate their visions of a liveable earth, and the means through which we might get there. For higher education specifically, this kind of debate can be important in defending the public good role of the institution against the slow drag into private benefit for student-consumers and corporations. Furthermore, despite the risk of greenwashing, sustainable development can provide an impetus for a more radical transformation in the institution, including the deepening of curricular engagement with the profound political and existential questions (McCowan 2023), and moves towards decolonisation, epistemic pluralism and an ecology of knowledges (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015; Misiaszek & Rodrigues 2023).

Given this contested backdrop, this panel will explore a range of crucial and complex questions. How does engagement with the SDGs in HEIs differ across the world regions and distinct institutional forms? How do institutional structures and processes constrain or alternatively empower actors in relation to the SDGs? Is the major barrier lack of coordination, fragmentation and silo working, or is a degree of unevenness and messiness inevitable and even desirable? How should institutions work together in a global higher education system, and how can asymmetries and hierarchies be guarded against to enable mutually beneficial partnerships? How do institutions perceive and engage with the international rankings, and can alternative sustainability focused rankings be a force for positive change?

The first presentation by Tristan McCowan will explore the role of HEIs as arenas for contesting and reframing the concept of sustainable development. Maia Chankseliani will then assess the role that critical realism can play as a framework for understanding universities as transformative actors for sustainability. The third presentation (Greg Misiaszek and Cae Rodrigues) draws on ecopedagogy and Southern Theory to problematise the political processes surrounding the SDGs at the international and institutional levels. Finally, Adriana Marroquin, Lupita Sandoval and Elizabeth Buckner will explore the ways in which HEIs in the Global South perceive the international university rankings and the implications for their engagement with the SDGs. Following the four papers, there will be an invited response from Gustavo Fischman, and then an open discussion with the audience. Overall, this panel aims to challenge assumptions and spark debate amongst the participants at the session. In addition to the themes outlined above, the discussion will also address the question of what should replace the SDGs in 2030, and how universities should be positioned in the new global compact.

Sub Unit

• Higher Education SIG

Chair

• Tristan McCowan, University College London

Individual Presentations

• Universities as spaces for contesting and reconceptualizing sustainability - Tristan McCowan, University College London

• Universities as sustainable development actors: Exploring the potential of a Critical Realist conceptualisation - Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford

• Coordination, Contestation, and Contextualization: Universities’ Diverse Perspectives on the Sustainable Development Goals - Ma. Guadalupe Sanchez-Sandoval, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto; Elizabeth Buckner, University of Toronto OISE; Adriana Marroquin, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Michele Schweisfurth, University of Glasgow