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Publication
Are distance higher education institutions sustainable enough?: a comparison between two distance learning universities
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Purpose – Universities are continually transforming its structure and governance in response to the new
social, environmental and economic challenges. Particularly, there has recently been a growing academic
interest for measuring sustainable practices of higher education institutions (HEI) aiming to monitor and
reduce their carbon emissions, as well as transform them into more sustainable organizations. More recent
studies began to focus also on the sustainable performance of distance education Universities. So it became
crucial to evaluate their sustainability practices through sustainability assessment tools with the aim of
improving their sustainability performance and boosting their role as agents of academic, social and economic
change. The purpose of this study is to assess and compare holistically sustainability implementation in two
similar distance learning universities and to evaluate their advantages and disadvantages.
Design/methodology/approach – One of the most rigorous and internationally used sustainability
assessment tools was used – the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System, to evaluate and
compare sustainability implementation in two distance universities, one from Spain and another from
Portugal: the Madrid Open University and Universidade Aberta. Indicators of both universities were
compared and ways of improvement in both universities were widely discussed.
Findings – The results of this research show that there is a similar pattern in both universities. Both have
low performance in campus operations and low levels of community participation but good performance in
sustainability courses and programmes offer. The results of both institutions were compared and allowed a
learning process for improvement.
Distance
learning
universities
Received 21 July 2020
Revised 5 October 2020
14 October 2020
Accepted 21 October 2020
International Journal of
Sustainability in Higher Education
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1467-6370
DOI 10.1108/IJSHE-07-2020-0260
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1467-6370.htm
Originality/value – This research hopes to contribute to the continuous research about the usefulness of
sustainability assessment tools in particular when applied to distance universities at the time that offers new
paths to carry out improved sustainable practices in crucial areas of interest such as research, administration,
education and resource-saving. This research also highlights the value of distance learning universities and
their ability to be more sustainable after the advent of COVID-19
Description
Keywords
Sustainability Distance higher education institutions Sustainability assessment tool Online universities Sustainability Case study Online universities Sustainability assessment tool