Panoramic difference of academicians in promoting sustainable change

Abstract

The social, economic, cultural, ecological and political transformations are essential factors of sustainable development and studies have shown that higher education is one of the important sources to bring required sustainable changes across the globe. This paper has tried to identify the homogenous groups of academicians, with similar viewpoints, and to know their opinion about the given variables that a higher education institute may adopt to promote sustainable change in society. The research was descriptive in nature and a data of 168 respondents was finally incorporated for analysis. Data was collected from faculty members of various management and engineering institutes in India. Cluster analysis, chi square test and one way ANOVA using Tukey's post hoc test for equal variance assumed was used for data analysis and hypotheses testing. 16 variables developed and used by Forum for the Future (2003) were used to measure the academicians' opinions. Three clusters were identified with different perspective in which first cluster is very optimistic and support all variables, second is with a very conservative approach and third cluster is with a futuristic approach.