U.S. Universities’ Investment in Sustainability Eclipsed by International Peers

Colleges and universities in the United States lag behind their peers around the globe in working toward the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals—including ending poverty and hunger, climate action, and expanding access to education—according to the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2025, published today.

The Trump administration’s financial and political attacks on higher education, as well as more pressing problems across the sector, mean it’s unlikely U.S. colleges will prioritize sustainability work in the near future.

While seven Canadian universities—including Queen’s University, McMaster University and the University of Alberta—ranked in the global top 50, Arizona State University, ranked joint sixth, is the only U.S.-based institution to crack the top 50. Three highly ranked U.S. colleges fell out of the global top 50 this year: Michigan State University is now at joint 61st, Penn State at joint 64th and Florida International University at joint 71st.

Western Sydney University in Australia topped the global ranking for the fourth year in a row.

THE—Inside Higher Ed’s parent company—ranked the sustainability efforts of 2,526 universities from 130 countries; 52 institutions from across the U.S. participated in the 2025 ranking, down from 58 in 2024.

Since 2019, THE has evaluated the performance of thousands of higher education institutions across the globe on the U.N.’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Universities that want to participate in the rankings are required to submit information for SDG 17, Partnerships and Goals, and at least three other SDGs. How well an institution meets those goals is then evaluated across four broad categories: research, stewardship, outreach and teaching.

Phil Baty, chief global affairs officer for THE, described American universities’ “general lack of direct engagement with the SDGs” as “disappointing,” especially because the U.S. has some of the world’s strongest research universities. “I’d hope they can turn their greatest minds more overtly towards tackling the world’s most pressing and urgent challenges.”

Under Trump, SDGs May Be ‘More Risky’

Although the nation’s lackluster showing in the 2025 Impact Rankings is based on university data that predates the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the administration’s attacks on the sector and political stances suggest the country’s higher education institutions may only face more barriers to becoming global sustainability leaders.

In March, the Trump administration denounced the SDGs, which the U.N. created in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration with the aim of reaching them by 2030. The second Trump administration has also pulled out of other international sustainability initiatives, including the Paris Agreement on climate change, and moved to cut billions in funding for scientific research and social programs—including many focused on reducing social inequities, addressing climate change and advancing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Bryan Alexander, a scholar who studies the future of higher education and author of 2023’s Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Age of Climate Crisis, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that even before the Trump administration’s denouncement of the SDGs, they’d failed to gain much traction among U.S. universities.

“When I mention SDGs in academic settings, I usually see blank faces and have to explain what they are,” he wrote, attributing the indifference to a stronger focus on other, seemingly more pressing matters plaguing higher education, such as financial instability. “That sense of institutional urgency, heightened by a steady stream of campuses closing, merging, or cutting programs and staff, looms large. In that context, the SDG goals look like noble but not essential, nice-to-haves rather than imperatives.”

According to Alexander, other deterrents to the sector launching a widespread commitment to sustainable development include faculty burnout, scarce resources, anti-expert animus, doubts from faculty and administrators that their efforts will make a difference, and anxiety about associated political risks.

And he expects all those problems to persist, if not worsen, in the coming years as Trump continues his assault on universities and pro-sustainability initiatives. “The anti-DEI campaign strikes directly at several SDGs,” Alexander wrote. “It will be harder for academics to win external support for any such work, from doing research to offering new academic programs, overhauling a campus power system to replacing vehicles with electric vehicles. It will appear to be politically even more risky.”

However, he said there are some less risky actions U.S. institutions can take to be more sustainable.

“First, renewable energy, especially solar, is simply cheaper than fossil fuels. Switching a campus’ power supply just makes financial sense,” he said. “Second, traditional-age undergraduates are much more interested in climate change and sustainable development than their elders, which means they will tend to be eager to take classes and study in programs along those lines.”

Walking a Fine Line

ASU also tops the global ranking for SDG 14: Life Below Water, which means it’s at the forefront of developing strategies that support the health and sustainability of aquatic ecosystems.

It launched one of the nation’s first schools of sustainability nearly 20 years ago, and although its main campus is located in the Arizona desert, ASU launched the School of Ocean Futures in 2024. The school connects research and teaching facilities in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with research happening on its main campus in Tempe.

The school is one example of how universities can help to “restore balance within the global environment,” said Marc Campbell, ASU’s assistant vice president of sustainability and deputy chief sustainability officer.

“Fundamentally, the work of sustainability is about trying to be more efficient in the use of our resources and trying to protect what’s out there,” Campbell said. “A lot of people can support the foundational work of sustainability, but we need to unload some of the baggage that’s associated with the word and the discipline.”

Doing that, he said, will come from making a case for the economic and social value of investing in sustainable development initiatives.

“In any organization there are supporters and detractors. You have to figure out how to walk that fine line to get people supporting the greater good and recognizing what that is,” Campbell said.

“When we can do that more effectively across the board and build broader collaborative partnerships with other organizations that are focused on the same goals, then I think we can get past some of the [political] baggage.”