Did Global Rankings and National Accreditation Drive Taiwanese Universities to Advance Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?—Competitive Advantage, a Moral Symbol or Leading to a Paradigm Shift

Abstract

Universities have recognised the pivotal role they play in advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to build a sustainable society. Two quality assessment instruments in higher education, global rankings and quality assurance, have developed a new set of metrics to measure university commitment to SDGs. This paper aims to analyse the SDGs advancement of Taiwan's 46 universities listed in THE Impact Ranking 2022 in response to the emerging sustainability metrics developed by global rankings and national accreditation, and to explore the purposes, institutional strategies and challenges they encountered. Major findings are as follows. Firstly, competitive advantage is the key reason driving universities for SDGs implementation. Secondly, the common strategy is to align university social responsibility project with general education curriculum. Thirdly, SDGs data reliability, internal quality assurance (IQA) mechanism establishment, intersectoral coordination and faculty and student engagement are the key challenges for SDGs implementation in Taiwan's universities.