The Sustainable University

Progress and prospects

Stephen Sterling, Larch Maxey, Heather Luna, Stephen Sterling, Larch Maxey, Heather Luna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136236938
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Entwicklungsökonomie

The direction of higher education is at a crossroads against a background of mounting sustainability-related issues and uncertainties. This book seeks to inspire positive change in higher education by exploring the rich notion of the sustainable university and illustrating pathways through which its potential can be realised. Based on the experience of leading higher education institutions in the UK, the book outlines progress in the realisation of the concept of the 'sustainable university' appropriate to the socioeconomic and ecological conditions facing society and graduates. Written by leading exponents of sustainability and sustainability education, this book brings together examples, insight, reflection and strategies from the experience of ten universities, widely recognised as leaders in developing sustainability in higher education. The book thus draws on a wealth of experience to provide reflective critical analysis of barriers, achievements, strategies and potential. It critically reviews the theory and practice involved in developing the sustainable university in a systemic and whole institutional manner, including the role of organisational learning.While remaining mindful of the challenges of the current climate, The Sustainable University maps out new directions and lines of research as well as offering practical advice for researchers, students and professionals in the fields of management, leadership, organisational change, strategy and curriculum development who wish to take this work further.

Part I

Context

1 The sustainable university

Challenge and response

Stephen Sterling

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

(Paul Valéry, 1871–1945, quoted in Ben-Ze'ev, 2000)

Introduction

The world that today's graduates are entering is already – and will be increasingly – very different from that inherited by previous generations, including by many of today's university staffs when they were graduating years ago. If Valéry's paradoxical line was true in his own time, it is even truer today if numerous global forecasts and reports are given their deserved credence (Royal Society, 2012; UNEP, 2012; World Economic Forum, 2012; Oerlemans et al., 2012; International Council for Science, 2012; UNSGHP, 2012). Current headlines, and increasingly everyday experience, underline that we live in interrelated local and global conditions of uncertainty, complexity and unsustainability; summed up by some as the ‘triple crunch’ of climate change, the end of cheap energy, and financial instability (NEF, 2008). These are times of contingency and emergence, not prediction and control, and the future in prospect is not a linear extrapolation of what has gone before. Indeed, we may be facing the collapse of systems that we have taken for granted for decades (Meadows et al., 2005; Diamond, 2005; Homer-Dixon, 2012). The mainstream of higher education may, therefore, largely be educating for a future that ‘no longer exists’.

Most of the millions of professional staff and some 135 million students (OECD, 2010) involved in higher education across the globe, including 2.5 million UK students, would agree that education is essentially about preparing for the future, both at individual and social levels. And yet, strangely, ‘the future’ – the planetary future and key trends that will affect people's lives in this century – hardly registers in most mainstream policy-making and practice in higher education, despite high-level calls over many years for a sufficient and appropriate response from higher education (see Tilbury, this volume). There are certainly significant exceptions and clear evidence of growing interest and engagement, not least through the catalytic effect that the Rio+20 summit had on parts of the international higher education community through the development of ‘The Rio+20 Directory of Committed Deans and Chancellors 2012’ and the People's Sustainability Treaty for Higher Education (see Tilbury, this volume). In the UK, funding council policies have had some evident success and impact over recent years in putting sustainable development on the higher education (HE) agenda. However, the fact remains that, aside from some notable pockets and centres of excellence, most HE research, taught programmes and initiatives make no reference to this overarching context, and sustainability – where it is acknowledged – is often seen as a special interest, or the province of campus management only, or is only understood in environmental terms. Yet, at the same time, global society and states are faced with a whole series of dynamic, interconnected and unprecedented challenges: in adjusting to an environment of no or low economic growth, rising unemployment, high energy costs, resource depletion and increasing competition, the need to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, an alarming loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification and collapsing fish stocks, rising poverty, inequity and malnutrition, and a global population of 7 billion and rising (UNFPA, 2011) to name some of the critical issues. However, and simultaneously, the possibilities and opportunities of such movements as the low carbon and circular economy, benign energy generation, fairer trade, green products and sustainable design, greater democratisation and constructive social networking, and the rebuilding of more resilient communities and restored ecosystems, spurred by new thinking and innovation in many sectors beckon as a positive vision of a more sustainable future.

Futurist Paul Raskin (2012: 12) suggests three possible global scenarios: worlds of incremental adjustment (‘Conventional Worlds’), worlds of catastrophic discontinuity (‘Barbarization’) and worlds of progressive transformation (‘Great Transitions’). The last of these, sustainable, scenarios depend on ‘an enlargement of consciousness’, which emphasises ‘global citizenship, humanity's place in the wider community of life, and the well-being of future generations’ (2012: 13). Raskin suggests that higher education can either drift along with the tides of change, or intentionally choose and contribute to human and global betterment:¹

the very plausibility of the Great Transitions depends to a significant degree on whether HE assumes a forceful and proactive role in advancing the necessary shift in culture and knowledge (2012: 14).

So the part played by higher education in helping society shape the future is clearly critically important. It is not just, however, a simple matter of making a stronger marginal or ‘add-on’ contribution to sustainability – the approach reflected in much of the relevant discourse – although this will be a first step for many institutions. Such is the precarious nature of our times, the challenge for higher education, as for other key institutions, is to reorient itself accordingly, to place sustainability and securing the future at the heart of its raison d'etre.

This transition is not simple: universities are complex organisations constantly facing a range of pressures. Even so, this challenge goes beyond ‘integrating sustainability’ or ‘embedding sustainability’ into higher education (as is it often termed). Despite decades of debate and work at national and international levels on environmental education, development education, and more latterly, education for sustainability and education for sustainable development (ESD), mainstream educational thinking and practice has still to embrace fully the implications of current socio-economic-ecological trends, let alone explore, critique and inform the urgent changes in thinking, practices and lifestyles that many observers deem necessary to assure a liveable future for all. While such foundational work has been invaluable, the greater challenge now for policy-makers, stakeholders, staffs and students is to integrate higher education into the wider societal context of sustainability: that is, to achieve systems that are fully attuned to and alert to the times (Sterling, 2004). In a much quoted phrase, the American writer and academic David Orr points out that the worrying negative global signals are ‘not the work of ignorant people (but those) with BAs, BScs, LLBs, MBAs and PhDs’ (1994: 7). It is also clear that high income countries, with high levels of educational attainment, have per capita ecological footprints far in excess of middle and low income countries (Oerlemans et al., 2012). Drawing on research that he conducted for the mid-term review of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, Arjen Wals suggests that ‘At present most of our universities are still leading the way in advancing the kind of thinking, teaching and research that only accelerates un-sustainability’ (Wals, 2010: 32). This stands in contrast to the view of the UK universities association, Universities UK (UUK), which in 2010 stated:

Universities already make a significant contribution to the UK's sustainable development strategy and have played an important role in researching the challenges, in developing new approaches to those challenges and also in improving organizational operations.

(UUK, 2010:1)

While this certainly has some truth to it, the ‘Statement of Intent’ from which this quotation comes is no longer to be seen on the UUK website, and the then chair of the former UUK Sustainable Development Task Group (which wrote the Statement), said in a keynote at a conference in the same year: ‘It is a huge challenge to get VCs to see this as core business’ (Broadfoot, 2010). Wals’ conclusion is no doubt a contentious point of view, but even if it were only partly valid, it raises a fundamental and unavoidable question about the purpose, business and responsibility of universities at this critical point in the twenty-first century.

Re-thinking the purpose of higher education

That higher education has a critical role to play in developing tomorrow's decision-makers, professionals and citizens is beyond dispute. But the full import of the rapidly changing socio-economic and environmental context within which such roles will be played out lies in the shadows rather than the foreground of higher education discourse, policy-making and practice. There seems to be an implicit assumption that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, economic futures, energy futures and ecological futures are, by and large, a matter of continuity, and so we can safely continue to educate for a prospective stable socio-economic environment as in the past. (The exception to this assumption is the emphasis on technological futures and the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on the workplace, where HE has sought to embrace its implications.) At the same time, current concerns about economic recession, and changes in funding of higher education, have raised questions about the purpose of HE, which echo an older debate about the role of universities.

In recent years, the tension between the traditional academic role of universities and the more instrumental role of preparing young people for the workplace and their place in society, has become more marked, particularly – in the UK – through shifts in government policy. In 2008, a White Paper Innovation Nation by the then named Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) underlined the economistic, skills-oriented view of the purpose of the university, in contrast to the more liberal conception of the university oriented towards educating for human and social improvement (Gough and Scott, 2008). In the same year, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) commissioned a ‘Strategic Review of Sustainable Development in Higher Education in England’ which described, for the purpose of the review, the core processes and function of higher education institutions (HEIs), as including:

To generate advanced knowledge and understanding of the world and of the role of humans and the impacts and implications of human activities within it. HEIs pursue this purpose through Research, and Teaching both of which should lead to in-depth learning.

(Policy Studies Institute et al., 2008: 2)

The tension between these two different conceptions and descriptions of the university's core function – the instrumental and the academic – was thrown into greater relief by further changes in government policy. A key turning point was the Browne report, Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (Browne et al., 2010), which not only further reified an economistic view of the purpose of higher education, but recommended a radical change in funding the sector, moving away from the state-funded grant system towards student loan financing. This thinking was in line with market economy philosophy where universities were to compete as providers for student ‘customers’ who would ultimately, through market choice, determine which courses and which universities flourished or failed. As Browne put it, ‘the money will follow the student’ (2010: 4).

While the effects of this radical change in policy are still being played out, critics have pointed to the redefinition of the purpose of higher education as being key to the policy's manifestation in practice. Collini (2010: 25), for example, argues that the Browne report ‘displays no real inte...