Walk through almost any university website today and you will find the word “sustainability” everywhere. It appears in mission statements, glossy strategies, speeches from vice-chancellors. On paper, everyone seems fluent. On the ground, it feels patchy.
In some institutions, sustainability has quietly reshaped how buildings are run, how research is funded, how courses are designed. In others, it remains something discussed at conferences, then parked. The difference is not enthusiasm. It is capacity.
New research based on case studies from universities across Europe, the UK and Latin America helps explain why. What stands out is how rarely progress comes from bold declarations. Instead, it shows up where leaders are given time, structure and permission to rethink how their institutions actually work.
One striking pattern is the failure of the lone champion model. Many universities still rely on a passionate individual to “own” sustainability. That person often burns out or hits a wall. The places that moved further treated leadership as collective work. Senior teams were brought into the same room. Academic leaders, professional staff and sometimes students worked through problems together. Not in short workshops squeezed between meetings, but in protected spaces that allowed for uncomfortable conversations.
People involved in these programmes describe a familiar moment. Once daily pressures fade, they start noticing how rules, incentives and habits quietly block change. Procurement policies. Promotion criteria. Committee structures. None of these are dramatic, but together they decide what gets done.
Governance turns out to be another fault line. Many leaders care deeply about sustainability but lack authority to act. In the more effective cases, learning was translated into formal power. Committee remits were rewritten. Responsibility was assigned to senior roles. Sustainability stopped being something reported once a year and became something that shaped everyday decisions.
There is also a myth that change must be either top-down or grassroots. The research suggests that both alone are fragile. What worked better was a mix. Senior leaders created cover and legitimacy. Staff and students shaped solutions. Peer learning played an unexpectedly large role. Seeing how another university navigated similar constraints built confidence and reduced fear of getting it wrong.
What did not work was piling up projects. Solar panels here. A new module there. The universities that made headway focused on pathways instead. They connected teaching, research, operations and governance into a story that made sense internally. Not everything moved at once. Choices were made. Trade-offs acknowledged.
Yet a quiet gap remains. Governing bodies, which ultimately decide priorities and investments, rarely receive systematic training on sustainability. Executive programmes are growing, but oversight groups are often left out. That leaves progress vulnerable to leadership changes or financial shocks.
On campus, this disconnect is felt in small ways. A lecturer unsure whether sustainability counts in promotion. A facilities manager with ideas but no mandate. A student who sees bold language but little follow-through.
Universities like to describe themselves as leaders of social change. The evidence suggests that leadership here is less about vision and more about craft. About learning how to align structures, incentives and people over time. The question now is not whether sustainability belongs at the centre of university life. It is whether institutions are ready to do the slower, less visible work that makes it stick.
