Stakeholders’ Expectations and Actual Disclosure: A Big Data analysis of Sustainability Reporting in Higher Education

Research on social accountability in higher education lags behind the engagement levels shown by students, practitioners, and stakeholders alike. In other words, while there is an increasing demand for greater transparency and improved standards in higher education disclosure, very few institutions are taking the necessary steps to implement sustainability reporting effectively. In this paper, we attempt to contribute to the aforementioned nascent stream of literature by examining sustainability reports from pioneering institutions to better understand what is being disclosed in such documents and whether or not it meets the demands of both internal and external stakeholders in terms of transparency. To estimate what higher education institutions disclose in their sustainability reports, we conducted content analysis on a sample obtained from Italian universities. The comparison among the reports highlights the convergence and divergence between stakeholders’ expectations and what higher education institutions disclose. Additionally, we contribute to the nascent literature on sustainability reporting in higher education by providing an empirical analysis of the current landscape, with potential implications for future steps in theory and practice.