Determinants of sustainability in the Spanish universities' strategic plans

In Spain, the government and society are more frequently considering sustainability, yet university operations have not widely adopted related practices. Previous research has shown that interest exists to increase sustainability curriculum and efforts in Spanish universities but that most students are not aware of their own environmental actions. In addition, online reporting of university sustainability initiatives is not a common practice. Recent policies have encouraged the development of institutional strategic plans in Spanish universities as a requirement for government funding eligibility. In this study, the researchers analyzed these strategic plans to understand what factors might play a role in contributing to the sustainability of a university's operations and curriculum.

The study included 45 Spanish universities that made their institutional strategic plans publicly available online. Of these, nearly all (42) were public universities. The authors used 137 determinants of sustainability in 7 categories (corporate governance, staff, environment, social sustainability etc.) to evaluate the sustainability of the university's policies, operations, and curriculum as reported in each school's strategic report available online. The authors identified four factors from previous studies that they believed would be related to the sustainability of the universities: (1) size of the institution, (2) number of faculty/research institutions related to sustainability (the authors believed that more faculty in sustainability would indicate a greater institutional interest in sustainability), (3) presence of an online sustainability disclosure, and (4) the political orientation of the region funding the university. Once they had analyzed the reports, the authors used statistical methods to determine whether there was any correlation between level of sustainability and their four factors.

The authors found four key results from their analysis. First, larger universities were correlated with more sustainability indicators, especially environmental sustainability initiatives. Second, a greater number of sustainability faculty was correlated with fewer sustainability initiatives. This indicated that academic study of sustainability did not translate into operational sustainability initiatives. Third, no significant difference in sustainability initiatives existed between schools that had published a public sustainability report on their website and those that did not. Fourth, political orientation of the funding region was only significant in impacting the social sustainability initiatives (diversity, inclusivity, accessibility etc.) of the university but was not significant in overall sustainability initiatives. This supports previous research that universities in more liberal regions may integrate more social sustainability initiatives into operations and management.

The authors believed that fewer than 40% of the universities in this study had acceptable levels of sustainability as demonstrated in their strategic reports. The researchers concluded that more encouragement is needed to improve the sustainability of Spanish universities' operations.

The study was limited by the availability of online strategic plans for the Spanish universities. In addition, the factors were selected by the authors and may have had more or less emphasis on certain aspects of sustainability. The authors found that sustainability reporting practices in Spanish universities were less well-developed than those of Spanish businesses.

The authors believe that Spanish universities must address that several barriers to improve sustainability. Specifically, they recommend the creation of institutional university policies or declarations (either aspirational or regulatory) that incentivize university sustainability efforts across departments. In addition, they emphasize the need to encourage greater student awareness and demand for sustainability at their university.