Barriers and levers for sustainability education (part 3)

The integration of sustainability into academic programs depends not only on institutional frameworks and governance structures but also on a set of organizational conditions that either facilitate or hinder implementation.  

This is one of our key findings from our recent research, based on more than twenty interviews with deans, program directors, accreditation managers, and sustainability leads.  

Sustainability integration is shaped by a combination of institutional support mechanisms, faculty engagement, operational constraints, and the capacity of institutions to measure and monitor sustainability within curricula.

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Levers for sustainability integration into curricula

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Across institutions, respondents consistently identified several key enabling factors:

• Strong institutional/leadership support, positioning sustainability as an explicit strategic priority.

• Valuing existing practices, recognizing and extending initiatives already developed by faculty.

• Faculty training, developing ownership through professional development, and supporting the translation of sustainability concepts into disciplinary terms.

• Cross-functional engagement, requiring coordination between teaching staff, administrative teams, sustainability officers, and leadership.

• Recognition and visibility mechanisms, including certifications, awards, or participation in international networks.

• Curriculum governance and feedback mechanisms, supporting and informing curricular evolution.

• Measurement and monitoring systems, e.g. mapping courses or student assessments, to track sustainability integration and inform improvement.  

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Structural barriers that slow or limit deep transformation

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Curricular transformation is not without its challenges. Despite growing momentum, several barriers continue to slow or limit curricular transformation:

• Administrative over-compliance, where frameworks are applied declaratively without real impact on teaching.

• Additional workload for faculty, with excessive tools or formal requirements creating resistance or disengagement.

• Difficulty translating sustainability into concrete content, even among engaged faculty.

• Difficulty evaluating the long-term impact of sustainability education, with limited post-graduation follow-up and poor understanding of graduates’ experience with sustainability in professional practice.

• Fragmented measurement systems, offering challenges to link curriculum mapping, assessment, and learning outcomes.

• Overlapping frameworks, such as the SDGs, GreenComp, ISO standards, and accreditation requirements, which can create complexity and administrative burden.

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Sustainability as a change management challenge

These findings suggest that sustainability integration in higher education is not solely a matter of curriculum design but also an organizational change process.  

Institutional commitment, faculty engagement, governance mechanisms, and measurement tools all play critical roles in determining whether sustainability becomes embedded within teaching practices.

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Recommendations for Higher Education Institutions

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Based on these findings, several recommendations can be formulated for HEIs seeking to strengthen sustainability integration:

1. Ensure strong strategic commitment from leadership, clearly positioning sustainability as a core institutional priority, as previously stated.

2. Invest in faculty training and pedagogical support, enabling instructors to translate sustainability concepts into disciplinary teaching practices, and ensure that these initiatives are embedded within governance structures, sustained over time, and supported by collective faculty engagement rather than remaining isolated interventions.

3. Avoid purely compliance-driven approaches, ensuring that frameworks are used as pedagogical tools rather than administrative obligations.

4. Recognize and valorize existing initiatives, encouraging faculty engagement through incentives, awards, and visibility.  

5. Develop systematic mechanisms to map and monitor sustainability integration within curricula, such as curriculum mapping tools, competency frameworks, and student assessment instruments to track where sustainability knowledge and skills are taught, identify gaps, and support continuous program improvement. ‍‍
6. ‍Strengthen mechanisms to monitor long-term outcomes, including alumni feedback, employer perspectives, and longitudinal assessment of sustainability competencies in professional practice.

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Research series: What we learned across parts 1–3

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Across this three-part series, we explored the places, faces and phases of curricular change (Part 1), to the role of institutional frameworks (Part 2), and finally the organizational barriers and enablers (Part 3) that determine implementation in practice.

Taken together, these findings show that embedding sustainability in higher education is not a linear process, but a system-wide transformation shaped by governance, frameworks, institutional capacity and moral entrepreneurs who push for sustainability norms adoption.

You can read the full white paper here: How to Transform Higher Education Institutions: The Role of Strategic Leadership and Academic Governance

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The role of TASK™  

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This research highlights that successful sustainability integration requires not only strategy and curriculum design, but also  robust systems for measurement, feedback, and continuous improvement.

TASK™ supports this institutional transformation by helping universities:

• Measure student learning at entry and exit points

• Provide evidence for curriculum effectiveness and accreditation

• Enable data-informed governance of sustainability integration across the institution

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Acknowledgements

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In this final article of the three-part series, we would like to thank the professionals who shared with us their time, experience, and expertise.  

We are grateful to contributors from the following institutions: Audencia, KEDGE, Grenoble EM, ESCE, HEC Paris, Leonard de Vinci, Regen School, ENPC, UniLaSalle, ENTPE, ESME, IUT Nantes, University of Sussex, UTEC (Uruguay), Leuphana University, KAUST, Jindal School of Environment & Sustainability, Ecopia, Sciences Po Paris – School of Climate.

We would also like to highlight Pauline Proboeuf, our Researcher, for this insightful and impact work.  

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