Sustainable Development Goals in Higher Education

The idea of sustainable development is based on the balance of social, economic, and environmental aspects of the development, to make the world more equalitarian, healthy and fair. These issues originated the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, signed by United Nations member states and focused on 17 goals. Through teaching, research and community outreach, higher education institutions play a central role in helping local and national governments and communities to achieve those goals. This paper presents a literature review to verify how the relation between higher education and the sustainable development goals has been established and to find out if there are any gaps in the research undertaken so far. Results confirm the relevance of the subject and identify future research opportunities in this field, also considering all learning that will be generated by the new global agenda. The analyzed papers highlight the importance of sustainability reporting and assessment for the institutions and show the need of integrating sustainability goals in the institutions’ strategies. It is also shown that there is a lack of researches demonstrating how the institutions have been considering the sustainability goals in their strategic plans.