Sustainability as an emerging mandate in higher education

Universities worldwide have recently made commitments to advancing sustainability and sustainable development. However, much of the literature on higher education for sustainable development (HESD) is practice-oriented or prescriptive. This article seeks to explain how and why universities are framing their sustainability commitments. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with sustainability professionals at 33 universities in 19 countries, we find two overarching discursive rationales for university engagement with sustainability, which also shape their views on sustainability rankings and assessments: 1) sustainability as an internally oriented organising principle that shapes approaches to campus-based activities and 2) sustainability as part of an externally oriented stance, namely a broader international orientation linked to recognition and solving global problems. Drawing on sociological concepts of legitimacy and distinction, we argue that visible commitments to sustainability support universities' claims to both moral and cognitive legitimacy, and global status, while also opening them up to criticism over authenticity and greenwashing.