Investigating the critical issues for enhancing sustainability in higher education institutes in Thailand

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), by and large, have increasingly committed to integrate sustainable development (SD) into their policies, practices, and programs. Recently, there have been several sustainability assessment tools specifically developed for HEIs. Many HEIs, especially small-to-middle sized HEIs in Thailand, are planning to enhance SD but are reluctant due to resource requirements. This study was conducted to investigate important sustainability implementation issues, including the effect of HEI sizes and UI GreenMetric participation. A weighting approach on sustainability dimensions and issues was utilized, and HEI's sustainability reports and official websites were reviewed to evaluate their sustainability performance of large-, middle-, and small-sized HEIs as well as UI GreenMetric participants and non-participants in Thailand. The findings reveal that the issues of the sustainability-integrated vision and strategy, safety and well-being, waste, and the SD-enhancing educational system were fundamentally critical for HEI sustainability. Moreover, most of the large-sized HEIs in Thailand that participated in UI GreenMetric were evaluated to have higher sustainability performance than others, apparently in administration, environment, and education/research dimensions. This study supports the necessity for a sustainability assessment tool for HEIs.