The 2024 study involved 22 institutions in 10 countries that collectively enrol over 190,000 international students. Overall, international students account for 35% of the total enrolment of the participating institutions.

Students are actively looking for sustainable universities

As you can see from the illustration below, has found that more than three-quarters of students would prefer a sustainable university over a top-ranked institution, a third would pay more to attend a university with strong sustainability outputs, and two-thirds factored in the sustainability performance of a university in their choice to enrol there. Not shown in the infographic is another impressive stat: almost half (48%) said they would choose a sustainable university over one in the Top 100.

The influence of UN Sustainable Development Goals

Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that all 193 United Nations member states agreed to in 2015 – with a target of these goals being met by 2030 – several specifically reference education and research, which is understandable given schools and universities’ role in educating youth for contemporary challenges. SDGs are increasingly being woven into K-12 and higher education curricula in many countries, and a large proportion of students are therefore familiar with the importance of the SDGs while deciding:

• Which destination to study in
• Which institutions to apply to
• Which programmes to consider

From the institutional side, working towards sustainability is complex – even when grounded in the best intentions. As the CAB report notes, international education is not easy on the environment. Collectively, international education at the 22 institutions and pathway providers in the 2024 study generated nearly 700,000 tCO2-e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) with the largest share of that carbon footprint – roughly 83% of the total – stemming from student travel abroad.

Institutions truly committed to SDGs often find other ways to contribute to sustainability efforts (e.g., through academic departments and programmes, through campus initiatives, and through careful consideration of in-person travel vs. digital alternatives).

In general, the CAB study found that most institutions in the sample are very committed to climate action. However, performance was weaker when it came to emissions reduction initiatives and staff involvement in sustainability efforts. Just under half of international staff are “somewhat” responsible for climate change action initiatives at their university, while a third are “moderately” responsible. Only 19% are “mostly responsible.”

As you can see from the chart below, barriers to staff action towards sustainability efforts include limited resources, lack of set targets, lack of clear metrics, and uncertainty regarding who is responsible.

Innovative ways of reducing staff travel

Given that in-person overseas marketing is one of the major ways in which international educators contribute to global warming, it is important for institutions to look for ways to reduce emissions in this area. The CAB survey reveals a trend of institutions merging the goals of overseas activities and using in-market representatives to reduce the amount of staff travel. More than half (59%) are leveraging faculty members’ visits to include recruitment efforts, 45% are leveraging alumni in local markets, and 32% are using their own students who are studying abroad.

Effects of global warming widely anticipated across the sample

Nearly two-thirds of institutions expect that their operations will be significantly impacted by climate change by 2030. Even now, Australian universities are reporting serious weather-related implications for their home campuses, as shown in the chart below.

Leaders in sustainability efforts

Stepping for a moment outside of the CAB findings, other sources indicate that Europe, and some European institutions in particular, have developed a competitive advantage with respect to sustainability. According to the , the top ten countries for progress made towards the 17 SDGs are:

1. Finland
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Germany
5. France
6. Austria
7. Norway
8. Croatia
9. UK
10. Poland

At the institutional level, of the Top 100 universities in QS’s global sustainability rankings for 2025, nearly half are in Europe. This includes twenty-six in the UK, six in Germany, four in Sweden, three in France, two in Switzerland, two in The Netherlands, two in Belgium, and one each in Ireland and Spain.

The full list of top-ranked universities for sustainability, according to QS, is . For those universities, sustainability is a compelling advantage. IESG Chief Executive Ailsa Lamont says:

“Universities have a powerful opportunity to lead the education sector’s response to climate change. By embedding sustainability into strategy, operations and leadership, institutions can build resilience, align with student and stakeholder expectations and strengthen their global reputation.”

For additional information, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: How growth and sustainable development goals can co-exist in international education”

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The episode also features a discussion on the increasing emphasis on sustainability and climate action in international education, with special guests Sarah Mines, founding member of the , and Stephen Robinson, the director of Champlain College’s .

We conclude the episode with a closer look at South Korea as the latest stop for our “Keys to the Market” segment.

You can listen right now in the player below, and we encourage you to subscribe via your favourite podcast app in order to receive future episodes automatically.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: The enduring appeal of study destination USA“

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2023 was a year in which more people, in more countries, have felt the harmful impacts of climate change. NASA research shows that July 2023 was the hottest month recorded since 1880. Around the world, humans and animals reeled from devastating floods, wildfires, droughts, storms, and intense heat waves.

More than half of youth have climate anxiety

People under the age of 30 are the most likely to consider global warming a matter of utmost urgency. Emma Lawrance, mental health innovations fellow at Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation, notes, “Children born today will experience seven times the number of heat waves as their grandparents. At the same time, they are not yet in traditional positions of power to make the changes that are urgently needed to safeguard their future.”

Nudging students and staff along

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has a very helpful “” to help students and staff on higher education campuses adopt sustainable behaviours.

The UNEP explains the concept like this:

“When a university provides easy bicycle parking and repair stations, it nudges students to bike to campus. When a university makes plant-based food the default dish, it nudges students towards environment-friendly diets. These ‘green nudges’ are positive and gentle persuasions to influence behaviours on campus and to instil environmental values that can last a lifetime.”

Examples of nudges include:

“Food: Using appealing descriptions for plant-based dishes, for example ‘spicy chickpea curry.’ A study in a university cafeteria found that describing vegetables in indulgent terms resulted in 25% more diners choosing them.

Recycling: Making recycling bins eye-catching and easy to use. One study found that bins with specialised lids increased the recycling rate for beverage containers by 34%.

Waste: In cafeterias, offering smaller plates and no trays, to discourage food waste.

Sharing: Setting up a system to share leftover food from meetings or events. A group of students at one university set up a food-sharing group that has prevented more than 7,000 kg of food from going to waste.”

A global survey conducted by Lancet of 10,000 youth aged 16–25 in 10 countries found that youth are experiencing significant levels of anxiety about climate change:

• 83% of respondents said people have failed to take care of the planet;
• 75% said the future is frightening;
• 59% were very or extremely worried and 84% were at least moderately worried;
• More than half reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty;
• More than 45% said their worry negatively affected their daily life and functioning.

Protests for change

Young people are clearly frustrated, and they are holding brands to account, including those in higher education. In 2019, the QS Environmental Concerns Survey found that 94% of students felt that universities could do more to reduce their environmental impact.

Last March, University of Toronto student protesters insisted that their university stop accepting research funding from fossil fuel companies. They were not the first in Canada to make such demands: in 2021, University of Victoria students and artist Emily Thiessen painted a 14-foot mural featuring salmon, a wind turbine, and words urging the new university president to divest from fossil fuels. Soon after, the university did just that, eliminating CDN$256 million in funding from fossil fuel businesses from the Working Capital Fund.

More broadly, in May 2023, students occupied schools and universities across Europe in climate protest, the latest wave of this type of mass protest.

Sustainable schools and universities have an edge

There’s no longer any doubt that educational brands gain a competitive edge when they commit to environmental sustainability. QS’s 2023 International Student Survey found that when considering study abroad, 4 in 10 international students “actively researched [a school’s] environmental sustainability strategy or efforts.”

In presenting the findings, QS insights manager Alex Berka reiterated the “active” part of the finding:

“This isn’t passive absorption of information or something they regard as a hygiene factor in their deliberations. It’s something they are really homing in on.”

Separately, Times Higher Education research has found that 82% of prospective international students say sustainability is an important factor in decision-making, and nearly 3 in 10 (27%) already use sustainability indicators to inform their study abroad decisions.

Measuring sustainability

QS, whose World University Rankings are closely read by students and institutions around the globe, also has an increasingly important sub-brand: the QS Sustainability Index. But QS isn’t the only organisation helping students and institutions to gauge campuses’ environmental commitment.

Other rankings include:

• The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainable Campus Index
• Times Higher Education Impact Rankings
• The UI Green Metric World University Ranking

A growing list of companies are devoted to helping higher education institutions to mitigate their climate impact. In Australia, for example, International Education Sustainability Group (IESG) launched its Climate Action Barometer for international education this summer to help institutions benchmark their environmental performance. So far, participating institutions include Charles Darwin University, Curtin University, University of Auckland, The University of Newcastle, The University of Sydney, University of Tasmania, Western Sydney University, and Flinders University.

Choosing hope over fear

Students want to play a significant role in the health and future of our planet, and an expanding menu of institutions and programmes are in line with that goal.

Some of the most exciting higher education institutions in the world right now have green programming as a competitive advantage. At Wageningen University in the Netherlands, for example, all six bachelor’s and 37 post-graduate degree programmes revolve around the environment, agriculture, and sustainability. QS ranks Wageningen among the world’s top 200 universities.

What about jobs?

Sustainability-focused programmes should lead to post-graduation work opportunities. As much as students want to protect our planet, research shows that most put job outcomes first. There is a clear role for career services to reach out to green employers and for communications staff to convey the practical, as well as philosophical, benefits of sustainability-oriented programmes.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 found that “nearly a quarter of all jobs (23%) globally will change in the next five years,” and that “roles from renewable energy engineers, solar energy installation and systems engineers to sustainability specialists and environmental protection professionals will be in high demand.”

Opportunities everywhere

Green jobs can also be found in sectors seemingly unconnected to the environment. For example, Jack Reicherts, who recently graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with a civil and environmental engineering degree, landed an incredible position as the first-ever sustainability adviser of a major entertainment company. He will work to reduce the impact that the company’s film production and travel has on the environment. He told The Nation in June 2023 that “one does not always need to have a direct match between their background expertise and the role in front of them; indeed, for [me], having expertise from a different industry was an asset … opportunities pop up in unexpected places.”

This suggests a clear role for career advisers to help graduating students who want their work to have a sustainable orientation to network, connect with alumni, and adopt a wide lens when searching for jobs.

If you’ve got it, flaunt it

Virtually all international students (98%) responding to the 2019 QS Environmental Concerns Survey agreed that universities should publicise their sustainability efforts on social media channels, on the institutional website, at student fairs and events, and in their brochures.

As we move through the decade, sustainability is taking its rightful place alongside graduate outcomes, value for money, rankings, and location as a top factor influencing where international students choose to study.

For additional background, please see:

• “Climate action barometer offers a new benchmarking tool for international education’s response to climate change“
• “Sustainability factors in the study abroad research for nearly half of prospective students“
• “Environmental sustainability as a competitive advantage in international student recruitment“

The post Research shows that international students now actively evaluate institutions’ environmental records appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

This year’s findings draw on responses from nearly 120,000 students and they pick up on a trend that we first began to notice last year, and the 2023 survey observers that four in ten international students say that, when researching institutions, they “actively researched their environmental sustainability strategy or efforts.”

Of those, nearly six in ten (58%) say they were satisfied with the environmental action that institutions were taking. But nearly a third (32%) were neutral on this question and another 11% were dissatisfied altogether.

In presenting the findings earlier this week QS Insights Manager Alex Berka made the important point that this represents an “active research” effort on the part of prospective students. “This isn’t passive absorption of information or something they regard as a hygiene factor in their deliberations,” he said. “It’s something they are really honing in on.”

And while many of those students are satisfied with what they find, Mr Berka points out that nearly half are looking for more evidence of institutional action on environmental issues. “There is scope for improvement,” he adds. “There is a large proportion [of prospective students] that are fairly underwhelmed with what they are seeing. There is definitely scope to improve the narrative that institutions can present to students as far as sustainability goes.”

The social dimension

Beyond the broad topic of environmental sustainability the ISS also explores student perspectives on the ways in which institutions can also be more socially sustainable – that is, how they might contribute to broader goals of social justice, diversity, and inclusion.

When asked what are the most important types of initiatives that institutions might undertake in this respect, students most commonly cited these five:

1. Encouraging and facilitating participation between students and local community with their social sustainability efforts
2. Efforts to create a diverse student and staff cohort
3. Increasing social literacy among students and staff – both within and outside the curriculum
4. Fair pay and treatment for staff
5. Investing in and increasing research of social sustainability initiatives

QS has rolled these factors, and more, up into a new – within which every university included the QS global rankings is given a score between 0 and 100 to sum up several sustainability factors. When those scores are applied, QS notes as well that sustainability appears to be a relative area of strength for Canadian higher education.

“Eleven out of the top 100 universities in the world, for sustainability, are Canadian,” says Mr Berka. “On average, a Canadian university will rank 126 places higher for sustainability than they do overall. That’s a real reflection of just how highly Canadian higher education performs on this particular metric.”

Those additional metrics underscore the growing importance placed on sustainability factors by prospective students. They are in turn an important signal to recruiting institutions that they will often now need to take additional steps to strengthen sustainability initiatives, and to communicate those efforts more clearly to incoming students and prospects.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Understanding what tomorrow’s international students really want“
• “Climate action barometer offers a new benchmarking tool for international education’s response to climate change“
• “Environmental sustainability as a competitive advantage in international student recruitment“

The post Sustainability factors in the study abroad research for nearly half of prospective students appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

The CABie relies on self-reporting from participating institutions. The aggregated data from that reporting will be rolled up into an index of key metrics, with an anonymised summary shared publicly and with each participating institution getting a tailored report that allows them to benchmark their performance against the index. “They don’t know how their rivals are doing,” says IESG Co-Founder Will Archer. “They just know how they compare.”

The new barometer launches with the support of seven founding member universities: Charles Darwin University, Curtin University, University of Auckland, The University of Newcastle, The University of Sydney, University of Tasmania, Western Sydney University, and Flinders University. Those institutions will collaborate in a pilot for the new benchmarking effort beginning in August 2023, and with subsequent reports coming back from the CABie in October.

IESG Co-Founder Ailsa Lamont adds: “There is an inevitable tension between international education as a force for good and the reality of students travelling across borders. For the world to be a better place, we need students to travel to study. And for that to be sustainable, universities need to address and own the question around the inevitability of associated emissions. It is time for the international education sector to step up, to measure and to track its policies and practices, demonstrating the sector’s commitment to climate change.”

CABie aims to contribute to a more sustainable practice of international education by empowering participating institutions to benchmark their performance against a range of important sustainability indicators with the end goal of making it easier for institutions and schools to reduce their respective carbon footprints.

How big is that footprint?

Robin Shields’ landmark makes an important contribution to the field by examining the specific climate impacts of international education, especially in the form of emissions related to international student travel.

“The rapid rise in international students has been roughly contemporaneous with increased advocacy for sustainable development and the role of higher education therein,” notes Dr Shields, quoting as well from a 2010 Universities UK paper which argues, “Universities have a unique and critical role in helping to address the challenge of climate change. Our higher education sector is a major player within the global search for solutions to environmental problems and in the development of more sustainable ways of living.”

Dr Shields’ study is concerned with the period 1999 through 2014 and, by his reckoning, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to international student mobility were between 14.01 and 38.54 megatons of CO2 equivalent per year as of 2014. This is a near doubling of the estimated emissions levels of between 7.24 and 18.96 megatons in 1999, even as the number of internationally mobile higher education students roughly tripled over that 15-year period. In other words, his analysis finds that GHG emissions scale in relation to increasing student mobility, just not quite as quickly as total student volumes.

The link to recruitment

Times Higher Education has reported that, based on its survey results, 82% of prospective international students say sustainability is an important factor in decision-making, and nearly three in ten (27%) already use sustainability indicators to inform their study decisions.

In a similar vein, a 2019 survey from QS found that:

• Only 35% of responding international students agreed strongly that universities care about the environment;
• 91% felt universities could do more to reduce the environmental impact of their institution’s operations;
• 79% would be more likely to choose a degree that helped to teach them how to reduce their environmental impact;
• 98% agreed that universities should publicise their sustainability efforts on social media channels, on the institutional website, at student fairs and events, and in their brochures.

A broadening response

The CABie arrives in the midst of a growing conversation, and an expanding effort, to manage and reduce the climate impacts of the international education industry. The co-founders of IESG, for example, are strongly linked to another leading group in this space, the Climate Action Network for International Educators (). Meanwhile, is focused on promoting environment sustainability in the language school sector. And specialized consultancies, such as , are providing bespoke training and advisory services for institutions, schools, and other stakeholders in international education.

For additional background, please see:

• “Environmental sustainability as a competitive advantage in international student recruitment“
• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Is there a greener future ahead for international education?“
• “International education begins to look ahead to a greener future“

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“Market segmentation is a marketing term that refers to aggregating prospective buyer into groups with common needs who respond similarly to a marketing action. It enables companies to target different categories of consumers who perceive the full value of certain products and services differently from one another.”

The great majority of prospective international students care deeply about quality of education and graduate employability. Beyond that commonality, other areas of expertise that can form the basis for market segments include:

• Affordability;
• Subject area (e.g., visual arts or computer science);
• Excellent environment/green energy programmes and commitment to environmentally sustainable practices.

This last area, sustainability, is the focus of this article.

QS Sustainability Rankings

In 2022, QS launched its QS Sustainability Rankings. In 2023, 700 universities made the list of .

The Sustainability Rankings include the following indicators, as well as others. (Students can filter the rankings according to which indicators they care most about.)

• “The sustainable education indicator looks at alumni outcomes and academic reputation within earth, marine and environmental sciences courses, and the availability of courses that embed climate science and/or sustainability within the curriculum. If a university has a research centre dedicated to environmental sustainability, further points are gained.”
• “The sustainable research indicator assesses the university’s research activity around the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and whether the government is funding research and development in this area.”

Which students fit into a “sustainability-driven” target segment?

What we might call the “sustainability-driven” segment – students who would be more interested than others in the QS Sustainability rankings, for example – is larger than you might expect.

It includes students in advanced economies who have the privilege of not living in poor households. Those students have the bandwidth to worry more about climate change than students who have more immediate priorities for study abroad (such getting a job that will lift them out of poverty). This relatively affluent segment is clearly illustrated in the following two screen shots of charts created by the Pew Research Centre. The charts are based on a survey conducted in 2021 in 17 advanced economies in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

The “sustainability-driven” segment is larger than relatively privileged students in advanced economies, however. This is because demand for experts to fill “green” jobs is rising and will keep rising. In this way, institutions known for their excellent performance on the QS Sustainability rankings can also appeal to students most motivated by graduate outcomes.

The link between sustainability and graduate outcomes

The World Economic Forum’s found that “nearly a quarter of all jobs (23%) globally will change in the next five years.” Some jobs will face elimination due to technological advances removing the need for human expertise, while others will be more in demand. Specifically, the report found that:

“Investment in the green transition, as well as increasing consumer awareness of sustainability issues will create new opportunities. Roles from renewable energy engineers, solar energy installation and systems engineers to sustainability specialists and environmental protection professionals will be in high demand.”

Overall, feedback from 803 companies – “collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers – across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions” reveals that these are the fastest growing roles relative to their size today:

• AI and Machine Learning Specialists
• Sustainability Specialists
• Business Intelligence Analysts and Information Security Analysts
• Renewable Energy Engineers
• Solar Energy Installation and System Engineers

notes that:

• “LinkedIn data shows hiring for green jobs consistently outpaces overall hiring.
• Just over 1 in 4 adults say sustainability is one of their top non-negotiables for a new job.
• Overall, job postings requiring green skills have grown by 8% annually over the past five years, but the share of green talent has only grown by roughly 6% each year, meaning there is a skills gap that needs to be closed.”

The Forum estimates that “the transition to clean energy is expected to generate 13.3 million new jobs globally by 2030, offsetting the 2.7 million jobs expected to be lost in fossil fuel sectors.”

�����԰������’s also points out that green skills are not at all limited to roles such as renewable energy experts. Multiple industries require workers with green skills.

Top 100 in the QS 2023 Sustainability Rankings

For years, US and UK universities have dominated the Top 100 QS World University Rankings. For example, in 2023, there were 27 US universities in the Top 100 and 17 UK universities in that top tier, followed by Australia (7); China (6); Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan (5 each); France (4); and Germany and Canada (3 each).

When we look at the Sustainability Rankings, however, we see a different organisation. The US and UK still dominate, with 30 and 20, respectively, in the top 100. But if you look at the table below, you can see that other countries punch above their weight in the Sustainability Rankings compared with the overall World University Rankings – and some do less well in the Sustainability Rankings than they do overall.

For example, Australia and Canada do even better in the Sustainability rankings than in the World University Rankings. Sweden, Spain, Italy, and Denmark are also notable performers in the Sustainability Rankings. New Zealand is a highlight: Of eight universities total in the country, three make the Top 100 and all eight make the full list. By contrast, China, France, Germany, and South Korea do not appear in the Top 100 for sustainability, though China and Germany perform well outside that top tier.

Top 10 Most Sustainable Universities (QS 2023)

1. University of California, Berkely (US)
2. University of Toronto (Canada)
3. University of British Columbia (Canada)
4. University of Edinburgh (UK)
5. University of New South Wales (Australia)*
6. University of Sydney (Australia)*
7. University of Tokyo (Japan)
8. University of Pennsylvania (US)
9. Yale University (US)
10. University of Auckland (New Zealand)

*Tied for 5th place.

Destination marketing implications

The QS Sustainability Rankings suggest that environmental programmes and commitment to sustainability is a niche area of competitive advantage for certain countries outside the “Big Four” English-speaking destinations, perhaps especially for New Zealand and Spain.

In general, institutions everywhere could appeal more to international students if they upped their environmental game. A of close to 4,000 students found that:

• Only 35% agreed strongly that universities care about the environment;
• 91% felt universities could do more to reduce the environmental impact of their institution’s operations;
• 79% would be more likely to choose a degree that helped to teach them how to reduce their environmental impact;
• 98% agreed that universities should publicise their sustainability efforts on social media channels, on the institutional website, at student fairs and events, and in their brochures.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: Is there a greener future ahead for international education?“
• “International education begins to look ahead to a greener future”
• “Going deep: The power of a niche strategy”

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They are joined by Jonathan Dykes, president and co-founder of and CJ Tremblay, founder and managing director of and founding member and VP of the Board at (CANIE), for a feature discussion on climate action in our sector.

Finally, we preview a new segment – Keys to the Market – with a spotlight on Vietnam as a key growth market for student recruitment.

You can listen right now in the player below, and we encourage you to subscribe via your favourite podcast app in order to receive future episodes automatically.

For additional background, please see:

• “���Ϲ��� Podcast: 2021: A year of resilience and innovation in international education“

The post ���Ϲ��� Podcast: Is there a greener future ahead for international education? appeared first on ���Ϲ��� Monitor - Market intelligence for international student recruitment.

Riding along with that sentiment is a growing awareness of environmental issues within the international education industry – an awareness that in recent months has sharpened into action.

“We’re not about cutting back on student mobility but trying to find ways that international education can operate in a more sustainable way,” says Ailsa Lamont, the director of Pomegranate Global, a climate action consultancy, and a co-founder of CANIE (). “We think of ourselves as rabble rousers – we’re trying to bring people together.”

CANIE is at the forefront of a relatively new conversation in international education. The founding group includes members in a number of leading study destinations, and this month it will hold its third industry summit. The International Education Climate Action Summit is planned as a virtual event on 12 November, and, with its European focus (or at least its orientation to European time zones) it follows two previous virtual conferences oriented to delegates in Australia-New Zealand and North America.

The summit events reflect CANIE’s commitment to bring industry players together, to build awareness, to share , and to promote action. “Everyone in international education should factor the cost of climate impact in their decision making,” says Ms Lamont.

For many international educators, one concrete expression of this will be taking steps to reduce the impact of emissions from air travel – whether that means reducing unnecessary travel, a greater reliance on virtual or hybrid events, an increasing emphasis on digital recruitment or engagement with partners abroad, or even carbon offsets to better balance the impact of necessary travel.

But CANIE is also concerned with promoting awareness of environmental impacts within the industry, and in supporting practitioners in driving change within their organisations and institutions.

The group’s larger goal is to move toward collective active within the industry. “We are pulling together key research on the sector and effective actions that [international educators] can take to counter climate impacts,” adds Ms Lamont. “We want to develop a vision for what a sustainable international education sector looks like and then bring together industry leaders to create a roadmap to move the sector to a more sustainable footing.”

The growing awareness of environmental issues within international education reflects a broader global awareness and momentum toward climate action, and of course that is partly reflected in students’ perspectives on climate issues and the extent to which good environmental practice factors in student decision making.

CANIE considers that student demand in that sense is itself a positive driver of change, and that institutions or organisations that take steps towards more sustainable practices should reap the rewards in terms of competitive advantage, attractiveness to students, or even placement in global ranking tables.

That is a view shared by Jonathan Dykes, a veteran of the language travel sector and a co-founder of another newly established climate action organisation called (GSS).

In helping to shape the GSS model, Mr Dykes drew partly on his early experience as the director of a language school that had adopted the EU’s (EMAS). “There were some very important lessons in that,” he says, but overall the EMAS scheme was also very expensive and difficult to maintain, in part because of complex audit requirements.

“The issue,” he explains, “became how to establish a scheme that could actually work for language schools. That was more relevant, more manageable, and accessible for schools.”

The GSS model is the answer that Mr Dykes and his co-founders have arrived at. It offers an accreditation process that relies on a school’s awareness and reporting of its climate impact practices. Schools apply for GSS recognition via a 48-question assessment which allows for a maximum score of 200 points and requires a threshold of 130 points for accreditation.

While GSS is newly incorporated this year, it has already fielded dozens of applications and accredited its first schools. The first GSS centres are all in Europe – including in France and in Italy – but applications are now coming in from further afield as well. Mr Dykes notes that many are not successful on their first attempt, but adds, “That’s really okay because we can then give them some guidance in terms of how to improve and they can apply again.”

Echoing the earlier point about linking international mobility – and air travel emissions in particular – to climate action, Mr Dykes is quick to stress, “We don’t want to discourage students from flying. That is the last thing we want to do as an industry. But we do need to take on board that a consequence of that is global warming and what can we do about it.”

The process, he explains, starts with awareness. “The first thing schools have to do is to log the flights of students and staff. Once they have that info, they can use online resources to calculate the carbon related to those flights. And then they can make a plan to offset those carbon impacts.”

But he also stresses that schools have to feel that they are getting some concrete benefits from that effort as well. “Accreditation should have some real commercial value,” he says. “If you are thinking of going an taking a language course and you are comparing three or four schools but one or two have accreditation for good environmental practices, that might tip the balance. I think [climate action] is a factor and is likely to become more of a factor in student decision-making.”

For additional background, please see:

• “The millennial shift to simple, authentic, and inspiring“
• “Everybody’s doing it: social proof and recruitment marketing“
• “Rio+20: How sustainable is your marketing strategy?“

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