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For Kakhaber Lazarashvili, sustainability is less about compliance with external expectations and more about institutional learning, shared responsibility and continuous improvement, so it must be part of how universities function, rather than an additional agenda layered onto existing structures.
Sustainability now occupies a prominent place in higher education discourse. Across Europe, universities have articulated sustainability missions, adopted institutional strategies and invested in initiatives addressing environmental responsibility, social engagement and long-term resilience.
These developments reflect an important shift in how universities understand their public role. Yet, in my experience as a university leader, sustainability remains vulnerable when it is treated primarily as a strategic or policy objective rather than as a shared academic and organisational practice.
The more demanding question is therefore not whether universities have sustainability policies, but whether sustainability has become embedded in their quality culture.
Universities operate within complex institutional environments shaped by policy frameworks, funding arrangements, labour conditions, digital transformation and broader political and economic pressures. Sustainability cannot be separated from these wider factors.
A quality culture perspective offers a way of engaging with this complexity by focusing on how institutions make decisions, involving their communities and learning from evidence over time. It shifts attention from individual projects towards the everyday practices through which universities balance competing priorities and respond to change.
At my own institution, this distinction became particularly visible when sustainability objectives were formally included in the institutional strategy. Initially, they remained weakly reflected in programme-level review discussions and teaching practice.
While sustainability was clearly articulated at policy level, it was not consistently addressed in curriculum design, assessment practices, or programme monitoring. Only when sustainability was explicitly introduced as a consideration within internal quality assurance processes – such as curriculum review cycles, structured staff reflection and systematic analysis of student feedback – did it begin to influence academic decision making in a more consistent and meaningful way.
Approaching sustainability through the lens of quality culture encourages institutions to look beyond formal commitments and consider how sustainability is reflected in learning and teaching, internal quality processes, governance arrangements and staff and student engagement. From this perspective, sustainability is less about compliance with external expectations and more about institutional learning, shared responsibility and continuous improvement. It becomes part of how universities function, rather than an additional agenda layered onto existing structures.
Within European higher education, quality culture is closely associated with trust, participation and enhancement-oriented approaches to quality assurance. It connects formal procedures with shared academic values and professional judgement.
I find this framing particularly valuable because it highlights the distinction between mission and strategy, on the one hand, and practice, on the other. Sustainability strategies can articulate ambition, but quality culture determines whether that ambition is translated into curriculum design, pedagogical choices, workload models, support structures and daily academic work.
Learning and teaching are central to this translation from intention to practice. Treating sustainability as a matter of quality culture implies integrating sustainability-related competencies across curricula, rather than confining them to individual modules or thematic initiatives. This integration supports pedagogical approaches that enable students to engage critically with complexity, uncertainty and long-term societal challenges within their disciplines.
At institutional level, I have observed that such integration becomes more effective when programme teams are encouraged to engage collectively with sustainability during internal programme review cycles. Rather than being presented with prescriptive requirements, academic staff are invited to reflect on how sustainability relates to disciplinary knowledge, professional practice and learning outcomes. This approach respects academic autonomy while embedding sustainability as a shared responsibility within quality processes.
Assessment practices play a key role in reinforcing this integration. When assessment criteria value reflection, ethical reasoning, collaboration, and problem-solving alongside disciplinary knowledge, sustainability becomes embedded in everyday teaching practice. In my experience, linking these discussions to internal quality reviews has helped ensure that sustainability-related learning outcomes are not symbolic, but actively monitored and supported.
Sustainability is also inseparable from the wellbeing of both students and staff.
Sustainable universities are not only those that manage resources responsibly, but those that create learning and working environments in which people can thrive. Excessive workloads, precarious employment conditions, and rising levels of student anxiety undermine sustainability just as surely as unsustainable patterns of consumption.
In my institutional context, discussions on sustainability have increasingly been linked to staff workload models, student support services and feedback mechanisms within internal quality assurance. This has helped reframe wellbeing not as a separate or competing agenda, but as a condition for sustainable teaching, learning and academic engagement. By addressing wellbeing through quality processes, sustainability becomes aligned with human capacity rather than abstract institutional goal.
From a quality assurance perspective, this approach reinforces the developmental role of internal QA systems. Internal quality processes can provide structured opportunities for institutions to reflect on whether sustainability ambitions – environmental, social and human – are meaningfully reflected in teaching practices and learning outcomes. When evidence from programme reviews, student feedback and staff reflection is used primarily to support institutional learning rather than external reporting, sustainability initiatives gain coherence and credibility.
Trust is strengthened when sustainability is understood as a shared institutional responsibility rather than a compliance obligation. In my experience, this trust-based approach encourages more honest reflection, greater staff engagement and more sustainable forms of institutional change.
A quality culture approach also respects institutional diversity. Universities operate in different national, regional and global contexts, with varying missions, resources and constraints. Even within the European Higher Education Area, sustainability challenges are shaped by local socio-economic conditions, regulatory frameworks and institutional histories. This diversity reinforces the importance of institutional ownership and context-sensitive implementation.
This perspective also invites reflection on how institutional success is defined and measured. International rankings increasingly influence strategic behaviour, yet they often struggle to capture sustainability in ways that reflect quality culture, teaching practice, or wellbeing. Institutional quality processes therefore play a crucial role in ensuring that sustainability is pursued in ways that remain aligned with academic values and local context, rather than driven solely by external metrics.
Ultimately, I am convinced that sustainability becomes durable when it is understood not only as a strategic priority, but as a core academic practice embedded in institutional environments, human wellbeing and quality culture. Policies and strategies remain necessary starting points. But what determines long-term impact is whether sustainability shapes how universities teach, assure quality, support their communities and learn from evidence.
When sustainability becomes part of quality culture, it ceases to function as an additional agenda and instead becomes a shared way of working – rooted in academic values and oriented towards a more responsible future.
