Editor's Message

I think it goes without saying that sustainability is well within the minds of everyone in higher education and around the world at large. Most people in the sector would be hard pressed not to go a week without attending a conference, picking up a magazine, reading a blog, or looking at any piece of insights data that didn't touch on sustainability in some way. By my count, QS has held at least 10 different panels on the subject this year alone, with one summit dedicating itself to the topic in its theme, and this magazine itself carrying one article every issue, more or less, that was linked to sustainability.

All of this is not to congratulate ourselves on a job well done. Speaking and action are, of course, two very different things, and we should always be mindful that our conversations on sustainability are constructive, as we explored last year in "Asking the Wrong Questions" and "Asking the Right Questions". Instead, I wanted to reflect on the point of a special edition of QSIM focussing on the Sustainability Rankings.

Throughout the year, as we've spoken about sustainability in all its forms, the topic can start to become an afterthought; something added on after the fact. This might not be entirely surprising.

I began my career in international higher education in 2011, but it wasn't until the past few years that sustainability became a key talking point for the sector. Some of you might rightly point out that the UN's SDGs weren't adopted until 2016, and this would influence my perceptions. While it's true the SDGs were adopted in 2016, their inception links back four years earlier to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. Our understanding of climate change and inequality goes back even further.

The adoption of the SDGs was a landmark moment, not just in terms of scale, but as a literal point in time that we can look to for understanding how they changed our thinking. They also serve as a way of reminding ourselves the importance of and how we must continue reshaping our actions for sustainability. That, however, is not always enough, and while sustainability has become embedded in what we all do, it can lose context over time.