How Do Universities in Türkiye Integrate Sustainable Development Goals into Their Strategies?

Leyla Yılmaz Fındık () and Şefika Şule Erçetin
Additional contact information
Leyla Yılmaz Fındık: Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education, Hacettepe University, 06800 Ankara, Türkiye
Şefika Şule Erçetin: Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Education, Hacettepe University, 06800 Ankara, Türkiye

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 24, 1-16

Abstract: The strategic plans of universities have an important role in enabling HEIs to contribute to sustainability transitions. To address the current lack of studies in HEIs in Türkiye, this paper aims to determine how universities in Türkiye integrate sustainable development goals (SDGs) into their strategic plans to indicate the extent to which these universities align with the 17 SDGs and to discuss the visibility of SDGs in strategies. The research has been designed as a qualitative study involving document analysis. QS World University Rankings or being a research university are the two criteria for the sampling. The scope of the study consists of 27 universities, representing 13.4% of the universities in Türkiye. The most striking result was that, apparently, none of the strategic plans mentioned Goals 1 (no poverty), 6 (clean water), and 13 (climate action). The sampled universities in Turkey have established a restricted set of strategic objectives linked to SD Goals 2, 5, 10, and 11. These remarkable findings prompt inquiries into the underlying reasons for this constrained scope, warranting further investigation. A potential factor contributing to the limited objectives regarding these goals could be traced to a lack of awareness and understanding of the intricate connections between these goals and the overarching mission of higher education institutions.

Keywords: sustainable development goals; strategic plans; higher education; quality education; Türkiye (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/24/16799/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/24/16799/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:24:p:16799-:d:1299496

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().