A common vocabulary, an unchanged grammar: SDG adoption and epistemic justice in European higher education

Abstract

The 2030 deadline for the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development is approaching. At the present universities’ field reveals a visible tension between stated commitment to sustainability and the structural change to fulfill it. Despite the institutional strategies and curriculum reform thoroughly examined by the literature, less attention has been given to the epistemic assumptions underlying indicator-driven sustainability agendas and to the ways managerial university governance may constrain more impactful approaches to sustainability. This study has two main aims: to examine how the SDGs are understood and used in teaching, research, and governance, including the structural and epistemic barriers reported by respondents; and to assess support for more critical and justice-oriented approaches to sustainability in higher education. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 54 academics recruited through transnational COST Action networks, the study combines descriptive statistics with thematic analysis of open-ended responses. Given the network-based sample, the findings are exploratory. They suggest that institutional engagement with the SDGs is often uneven and formed by existing organizational logics. A substantial majority of respondents support critical reformulation of the SDGs rather than unreflective agreement, pointing to a persistent tension between technocratic approaches to sustainability and broader consideration with epistemic justice. The findings also indicate that a more consequential approach on sustainability in higher education may require stronger recognition of Indigenous, local, community-based and intergenerational knowledge, as well as greater institutional capacity for critical and reflexive engagement beyond metric alignment.