Beyond Green Promises: What Universities Need to Make Sustainability Part of Learning

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A university can bring students together to solve real problems, encourage fresh thinking and improve teaching without making sustainability a clear part of everyday learning. This gap is explored in the study 'From Implementation Tensions to Institutional Capacity Building for Sustainability Goals in Higher Education,' published in Sustainability. Researchers Kai Pata, Meril Ümarik and Larissa Jõgi examined an educational initiative at Tallinn University in Estonia, finding that the difficulties of introducing new teaching practices helped build useful skills and systems, but their connection to sustainability remained uneven.

The study followed the 2016–2020 implementation of LIFE, short for Learning in Interdisciplinary Focused Environment, a six-credit course bringing together teams of at least six students from three or more disciplines to address complex societal challenges. Compulsory for all bachelor's students and many master's students, LIFE gives learners a role in choosing project goals and methods. The researchers examined institutional documents, interviews with four university leaders and 19 academic supervisors, and feedback from 151 students selected from 1,314 survey respondents because their written answers were relevant to the analysis.

Giving Students Freedom Takes More Than Stepping Back

Students who were used to following clear instructions sometimes felt unsure when asked to lead a project, especially when their responsibilities and the teacher's role were not clearly explained. Some needed more help at the beginning, and others enjoyed choosing their own direction and making decisions. Teachers had to give enough guidance to keep the work moving and still leave students in charge of their projects.

Teams received clearer roles, progress targets, student leaders and regular feedback, along with time to discuss how the work was going and who was responsible for each task. Teachers offered support when needed and gave groups more independence as they gained confidence. These changes created more ways to help students work independently, but they did not show that every student became confident working without guidance. Taking responsibility and showing initiative could help students address sustainability problems, although participants rarely made that connection themselves.

The researchers looked at four areas of university life: people's responsibilities and freedom to make decisions, relationships between staff and students, rules and how work was shared, and the tools and spaces available for projects. Changes offered stronger evidence of lasting improvement when they became regular practices supported by the university, allowing future teams to benefit from what earlier groups had learned.

Mixing Subjects Does Not Guarantee Shared Understanding

Putting students from different courses in the same room did not necessarily produce genuinely integrated work, because some teams continued dividing tasks along familiar subject boundaries. One student described a project that lacked meaningful disciplinary diversity; another reported that combining law, political science and social pedagogy helped the group develop a more rounded, evidence-based understanding of its problem. Strong subject knowledge remained important, since useful collaboration required participants to explain and connect their expertise.

Among the selected respondents, 71% in the earlier survey group and 64% in the later group said their project integrated different disciplines; 58% and 41%, respectively, reported learning something new from other disciplines. These figures describe separate groups within surveys that changed over time, so they should not be treated as a firm trend. In the later group, average ratings were 3.78 out of five for connecting different disciplinary perspectives and 3.47 for applying newly acquired professional and interdisciplinary knowledge.

Joint supervision, staff networks, repeated discussion and workload arrangements supporting collaboration helped create stronger connections across departments. The findings point to a need for shared methods that help teams compare ideas, define problems together and combine their contributions into a coherent solution. Having several disciplines represented created an opportunity; the quality of the conversation determined how much that opportunity delivered.

Rules Help Projects Grow, but Can Create New Burdens

Expanding LIFE across the university exposed practical obstacles involving budgets, staffing and how teachers' work across departments was recognised and paid. Collaboration was difficult to sustain when existing systems did not properly acknowledge or compensate it. Common project requirements, progress reviews, feedback procedures, monitoring and revised workload arrangements gave the initiative firmer support, helping educational experimentation become part of ordinary university practice.

Formal procedures sometimes created new difficulties for participants. One student explained that attending a compulsory 90-minute feedback session could consume ten hours once travel was included, illustrating how a rule designed to support learning could place a disproportionate burden on someone living outside the city. The institutional strength emerging from these experiences was an ability to reconsider arrangements when problems appeared, with flexibility and quality requiring repeated attention.

Digital platforms, shared time slots, learning spaces, workshops and project plans improved coordination during individual courses. Preserving knowledge and relationships after a semester proved harder, leaving supervisors concerned that new teams could keep starting from scratch. Evidence of lasting partnerships, reusable knowledge and continued development of project results was weaker than evidence of successful short-term organization. Sustainability challenges often extend across years, making continuity an essential part of turning classroom activity into sustained work.

Sustainability Needs a Clear Place in Everyday Learning

The projects had substantial social relevance: researchers linked 116 of 162 project titles to Sustainable Development Goals, with education, sustainable cities and communities, and health especially prominent. Other themes included decent work, inequality, innovation, climate action and strong institutions. In both selected student groups, 95% considered project results useful to target groups or stakeholders; 94% of the earlier group said results could be applied in practice. Project titles and perceived usefulness could indicate relevance, but could not establish that sustainability objectives guided the work or that measurable benefits occurred.

University leaders spoke more clearly about sustainability and societal purpose than students and supervisors did when describing daily practice. Some participants explicitly reported learning about sustainable development or environmental protection, and there were examples of teaching coordination around sustainability. Most accounts concentrated on teamwork, responsibility, practical relevance and project delivery. The central finding was that LIFE strengthened the university's ability to collaborate, learn and adapt, with a less consistent connection between those abilities and explicit sustainability goals.