Sustainability and higher education quality: empirical evidence from Brazilian HEIs

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether sustainability practices adopted by Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) are associated with traditional indicators of educational quality. It examines how sustainability initiatives are positioned within institutional performance metrics drawn from national and international rankings. Design/methodology/approach Data for 19 Brazilian HEIs were compiled from UI GreenMetric, Folha University Rankings (RUF), official government indicators (MEC) and the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking. Quantitative analyses combined Pearson and Spearman correlations with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). A descriptive examination of SDG-related performance and illustrative institutional cases complemented the statistical results and provided contextual interpretation. Findings The analyses did not yield statistically robust evidence of a direct association between sustainability indicators and conventional quality metrics. Correlations between sustainability and quality variables ranged from weak to moderate, while fsQCA revealed multiple heterogeneous causal configurations without a single dominant pattern. SDG results and qualitative evidence show that sustainability initiatives are expanding and generating social and environmental benefits but remain only partially integrated into existing evaluation frameworks for academic quality. Originality/value This study offers an empirical, mixed-methods assessment of how sustainability is currently related to institutional quality in Brazilian HEIs. By integrating ranking-based indicators, configurational analysis and SDG evidence, it highlights a structural disconnect between sustainability efforts and prevailing quality metrics and points to the need for governance-sensitive, context-specific indicators to better capture the academic impacts of sustainability initiatives.