Advancing Sustainable Development Goal 4 Through Green Education: A Multidimensional Assessment of Turkish Universities

Abstract

In this study, we provide, to our knowledge, one of the first multidimensional, data-driven evaluations of green education performance in Turkish higher education, combining the THE Education Score, THE Impact Score, and the UI GreenMetric Education & Research Score (GM-ED) with institutional characteristics, and situating the analysis within SDG 4 (Quality Education). While universities worldwide increasingly integrate sustainability into their missions, systematic evidence from middle-income systems remains scarce. To address this gap, we compile a dataset of 50 Turkish universities combining three global indicators—the Times Higher Education (THE) Education Score, THE Impact Score, and the UI GreenMetric Education & Research Score (GM-ED)—with institutional characteristics such as ownership and student enrollment. We employ descriptive statistics; correlation analysis; robust regression models; composite indices under equal, PCA, and entropy-based weighting; and exploratory k-means clustering. Results show that integration of sustainability into curricula and research is the most consistent predictor of SDG-oriented performance, while institutional size and ownership exert limited influence. In addition, we propose composite indices (GECIs). GECIs confirm stable top performers across methods, but mid-ranked universities are volatile, indicating that governance and strategic orientation matter more than structural capacity. The study contributes to international debates by framing green education as both a measurable indicator and a transformative institutional practice. For Türkiye, our findings highlight the need to move beyond symbolic initiatives toward systemic reforms that link accreditation, funding, and governance with green education outcomes. More broadly, we demonstrate how universities in middle-income contexts can institutionalize sustainability and provide a replicable framework for assessing progress toward SDG 4.