Sustainability in Higher Education

The purpose of this thesis lies within the idea to create an understanding of the importance of sustainability and a sustainable development and furthermore to understand the effort of institutions of higher education towards these concepts. The focus is set on the performance of institutions of higher education based on their contribution towards the topic of sustainability. The method, which has been used in this thesis, is the quantitative method, using the data provided from the ranking website (Times Higher Education Impact Ranking), which did the ranking of universities globally, taking into account their contribution towards the topic of sustainability. Through the analysis of linear regression it has been proved that, talking about the dependence of two variables (the dependent variable – Overall Ranking and the independent variables – 17 Sustainable Development Goals) from 17 SDGs, there are several ones that have a higher impact on the overall ranking than others. The analysis has shown that SDG4 (Quality education) is one of the indicators having the highest impact on the overall ranking of the universities. SDG17 (Global partnership) has resulted to be as well one of the most influential indicators, which has been set as well as the one mandatory indicator, to provide information for, if decided to take part in the ranking. Finally, through this research it has been achieved to ensure an understanding of sustainability as a factor on the image of an institution of higher education and the identification of those indicators with a higher influence on the overall ranking