Sustainability rankings in higher education: 'The right thing to do' or the pursuit of global recognition?

As universities strive to become more sustainable and support sustainable development broadly, sustainability assessments and rankings have proliferated and become influential in higher education worldwide. A growing number of universities in lower- and middle-income countries are participating, often with fewer economic and human resources than their counterparts in the Global North. We conceptualize these sustainability assessments and rankings as a new ranking product that both capitalizes off existing rankings infrastructures and logics, while also claiming to address limitations in existing rankings by focusing on societal impact and contributions to global challenges. Drawing on 28 interviews from universities located outside North America and Europe, we examine why universities participate in sustainability assessments or rankings to better understand their appeal. We find three major perceived benefits, namely, to improve institutional practices, to learn from other universities, and to enhance status and recognition. Our findings suggest that their growing power in higher education comes in part from their ability to imbue a marketized ranking product with moral legitimacy. Nonetheless, we also found important critiques: institutions highlighted the administrative and financial burdens of participating. Second, many found that the standardized metrics failed to reflect their context. We argue that that sustainability rankings and assessments do not well capture the realities and practices of universities outside of North America and Europe; this is concerning because the growing influence of sustainability rankings globally could both reinforce existing academic hierarchies while also limiting conceptions of universities' role in sustainability, all while benefitting from assumptions of their legitimacy.