The hidden culture of academic travel

The International Education Sustainability Group (IESG) was founded in 2023, by international education professionals passionate about climate action to provide the sector with tools to understand and mitigate its impact. It’s Climate Action Barometer Global Wave 2024 benchmark measured emissions associated with travel related to international education by staff and students from a group of 22 institutions during 2022-2023, across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

According to its benchmark, nearly 700,000 tonnes of carbon emissions were linked to staff and student travel, including 190,000 international enrolments, the equivalent of roughly 300 million litres of fuel. At a notional €100 per tonne carbon price, that’s about €70m from just 22 institutions.

A 2019 study by Professor Robin Shields, for the University of Bath at that time, estimated that aviation emissions from international student travel in 2014 ranged from 14 to 39 megatons, comparable to the annual emissions of countries like Latvia or Tunisia. Although emissions per student are declining due to more regional study patterns, institutions rarely account for student-travel emissions; most tracking still focuses only on staff air miles.

Collaboration is vital, but Stefan Gössling, a Professor of Tourism Research at Linnaeus University and Human Ecology at Lund University, Sweden, argues that much of the mobility that underpins it is driven by deeply human, rather than purely professional, motivations.

Professor Gössling, whose research focuses on the sustainability of tourism, transport and mobilities, offers a pragmatic assessment of the relevant factors, arguing that it is attractive for academics to visit conferences for the same reasons it is attractive for business travellers: “nice hotels, nice locations, nice company, and all paid for.”

This perspective gets to the crux of the issue: the carbon cost of internationalisation is directly linked to the culture of academic travel, a culture that is set in its ways. He challenges the notion that physical presence is always necessary for high-impact collaboration: “I have worked with hundreds of people I have never met, and usually more efficiently, because the work has been focused on the issue at hand.”

And since long-haul flights, the biggest contributor to emissions, don’t have greener options yet, this cultural norm becomes even harder to break.

Professor Gössling’s research refutes the idea of easy technological fixes, asserting that “sustainable aviation is a myth.” He points to the non-sustainability of biofuels at scale and the lack of viable synthetic fuels, noting recent retreats from ambitious net-zero targets by international bodies. His conclusion is uncompromising: “Unless we go by train, there is no sustainable mobility.”

Another question is whether it is the moral imperative of universities to drastically recalibrate their operations, moving the conversation from ‘how can we fly sustainably?’ to ‘how can we deliver global outcomes without flying?’

For institutions, navigating this reality requires a “tricky balancing act,” according to Ailsa Lamont, Co-founder and CEO of the IESG. She argues that genuine change requires environmental sustainability to be a “key pillar of strategy that is pushed from the top,” committing universities to three core actions.

First, she says universities need to build climate literacy among staff and students, so everyone understands the impact of travel. Second, they should use their influence with partners and suppliers to push for more sustainable practices.

“They must actively avoid generating emissions by finding alternatives to travel where possible, and where travel is still deemed essential, minimising them through the application of sensible policy and guidelines,’ she tells QS Insights.

Cutting flights is also more inclusive, which matches the values of UN Sustainable Development Goals. According to Dr Debra Rowe, President of the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, many higher education institutions already have the technologies for virtual learning and hybrid classes so the cost to switch over is not very high. “Also, for universities that are not within the European network for low cost air travel, the savings from reducing the number of flights can be very substantial,” she says.

From carbon budgets to structural reform

Universities are now backing their climate promises with stricter travel policies, financial checks and changes to how decisions are made. The shift to a low-carbon model is not cheap; it demands significant financial investment in technology, training and complex structural change. The upfront cost can be a major barrier, particularly for institutions facing tight budgets, experts say.

The most effective strategies make carbon costs visible. At the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, staff receive regular data on travel emissions and share climate-smart travel practices, raising awareness about travel’s climate impacts.

Elsewhere, universities such as University of Bristol and University of California are adopting similar measures, tightening travel approvals, building carbon budgets and requiring staff to compare emissions before booking.

The University of Tasmania is certified carbon neutral under the Australian Government’s Climate Active Standard. Its 2022 Emissions Reduction Strategic Plan targets a 50 percent cut in emissions by 2030 (from 2015 levels) and introduces an internal carbon budget to curb air travel and other emissions.

Many universities in the US have been involved with climate advocacy group, Second Nature, which has been helping over 400 colleges and universities achieve their climate action goals.

For years, these universities have had commitments and actions to go toward creating a net zero campus. Additionally, institutions are pledging to get to net-zero emissions under The United Nations' Race to Zero campaign.

Lamont notes that the most effective strategies she has observed involve a crucial combination of elements: “equipping people to understand the climate impact of travel, providing practical guidelines, and crucially, tracking and publicly reporting the carbon cost of all travel.”

Sustainable travel practices can include helping staff select travel routes that generate fewer emissions, such as using the Smart Travel Tool from Atmosfair, which rates routes and modes of transport based on the smallest carbon footprint, she adds.

As per the latest Climate Action Barometer by the IESG, 4 out of 21 institutions indicated that their international teams have dedicated budgets to invest in climate action.

According to Dr Stephen Robinson, Director and Professor, Champlain College, Dublin Campus, his field of US study abroad in Europe is faced with a dilemma.

“We all want these valuable global experiences for our students, but there is an environmental cost to such academic travel,” says Dr Robinson, who is also an expert on climate action and sustainability in study abroad.

Around 85 percent of his programme’s carbon footprint comes from student flights, not only to and from the destination, but from additional travel students take once they are abroad.

“Some study abroad programmes operate for as little as two weeks in the country, and to me that’s a lot of flight emissions for likely a lesser academic return. Unfortunately, the trend in US study abroad is an increasing student demand for these short-term programmes at the expense of longer-term ones, so we still have a lot of work to do,” he notes.

“We can reduce those by being more strategic about how often and where we travel, and especially the mode of transportation we choose. Within Europe, where the rail network is well developed, travel by train comes with significant emissions savings when compared to flying. So, institutions need to ask if travel is necessary. They also should promote and even incentivise low carbon modes of travel where feasible,” he suggests.

Even where low-carbon options exist, many programmes report continued demand for short, flight-heavy trips, fuelling a quiet sense of defeatism that behaviour change lags policy.

On the academic side, the biggest structural barrier in reducing travel-induced emissions is its reward system. Career advancement has long been tied to physical presence, conferences, keynote speeches and overseas fieldwork.

The inherent difficulty in this change is reflected by Professor Gössling’s observation. His personal impression is that “everybody is still flying the world.” This suggests that policies must be backed by institutional resolve to enforce genuine behavioural shifts, such as those colleagues who, Professor Gössling notes, are proactively “making the switch to no longer fly.”

Hybrid learning and climate literacy

If sustainable global learning is the goal, one key shift is embedding climate literacy across disciplines, not just reducing impact on campus, but using teaching to influence wider change. Dr Pii-Tuulia Nikula, Associate Professor, School of Business, Eastern Institute of Technology, New Zealand, teaches courses in sustainable organisations and says in addition to reducing their negative environmental and social impacts, universities can lead by influencing others.

Education for sustainable development, says Dr Nikula, has long been an established concept, but its integration varies across countries, institutions and academic programmes. “For example, sustainability can be embedded within disciplinary curricula, or universities can offer generic electives accessible or mandatory to all students.

“There is also some evidence that carefully designed international programmes can enhance the understanding of sustainability concepts.” adds Dr Nikula, who is also the co-founder of Climate Action Network for International Educators (CANIE).

Given the volume of student travel, initiatives like European Erasmus+ now offer Green Travel Grants to incentivise students to choose low-carbon transport, showing how funding can drive behaviour change at scale.

The regional context profoundly shapes the approach. Lamont, also one of the co-founders of CANIE, notes an interesting contrast: “In Europe, sustainable mobility appears to focus more on encouraging students and staff to get off of planes and onto trains,” leveraging dense, interconnected rail infrastructure.

Conversely, for universities in Australia and New Zealand, rail travel is practically impossible for international connections, institutions are forced to be “a little more creative around how they build student engagement with the topic and ensure that students are exposed to these key issues as part of their study.”

Accountability and collective action

Universities need to work together and measure progress in a consistent, transparent way. The sector, Dr Nikula observes, is “still lacking a centralised platform for transparent reporting on the outcomes of sustainability efforts,” making comparative progress and honest benchmarking difficult. While a handful of institutions across the globe demonstrate leadership by publishing their comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions in annual sustainability reports, this practice needs to become the norm, not the exception.

To overcome this fragmentation, Dr Nikula advocates for a crucial shift towards “threshold-based target setting.” This means universities must align their emissions reduction goals with “scientifically defined planetary boundaries,” rather than selecting targets arbitrarily. She cites schemes like the Science Based Targets initiative, used successfully in the business world, as a relevant model for universities.

So how can universities effectively measure and report the true environmental cost of academic mobility, and what frameworks or benchmarks are emerging globally for this purpose?

“There are benchmarks, but ultimately it boils down to: we just can’t fly as academics, unless we believe that our research is more important than our contributions to climate change (which is what everybody believes, unfortunately),” says Professor Gössling.

The need for scientific rigour and shared frameworks is driving new forms of international collaboration. Dr Rowe points to high-level initiatives like the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative, which collaborates with 10 United Nations agencies to share best practices on managing carbon footprints and embedding sustainability across the sector.

“This is a strong international trend to address carbon footprint, and there are tools and informational resources to help those that are not yet doing this so they are not left behind,” she says.

The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS), a global self-reporting framework, requires universities to track their greenhouse gas and carbon footprints, enabling benchmarking and the sharing of best practices.

“Since many sustainability roles require these skills, it is often helpful to the institution and the students to bring in the students to help conduct the assessment,” observes Dr Rowe.

Similarly, groups like the CANIE play a crucial role in bringing the sector together to share data, approaches, and good practices.

Carbon calculations are fairly well parameterised now, especially when it comes to travel emissions. “Several platforms exist to help institutions with these calculations on a whole-campus level, but also including global mobility, such as Second Nature and SIMAP based in the US. The IESG has a platform specifically for travel emissions in international education and works with institutions to help reduce them,” says Dr Robinson.