Reporting University Performance through the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda: Lessons Learned from Italian Case Study

Abstract

The shift of sustainability paradigms within the academic context has prompted universities to develop additional accountability tools to respond to the resulting demand for information. However, in terms of social reporting, universities have complete discretion regarding the content and nature of their sustainability budgets. The resulting diversity has led to greater heterogeneity with regard to information systems, which in turn poses the risk of making reports for stakeholders difficult to understand and complicates benchmark comparisons between different institutions. This paper aims to summarize the state of the art of sustainability reporting in Italian state universities, and to assess the compliance of these reports with global sustainability trends. This is achieved by determining the extent to which the sustainable development goals, outlined by the 2030 Agenda, are integrated into the substantive indicators used in the preparation of sustainability reports. The results show that sustainability reporting in universities is still in its early stages. Although only 29 universities—which represent 42% of the total number of universities initially surveyed—have pursued a sustainability reporting process, this research highlights a gradual increase in the implementation of SDGs as a criterion for assessing sustainable performances.