Sustainable Development at Higher Education in China: A Comparative Study of Students’ Perception in Public and Private Universities

This research is implemented in the backdrop of the increasing number of private universities established in China over the last decade, and a growing public concern of sustainable development. The private university has a different reputation and source of funding compared with the public one, leading to different perception and practices toward sustainable development. Yet, none of past studies have investigated into public and private universities in the Chinese context, making this study fill this gap through comparing students’ perception in Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering (a public university) and Guangzhou College of South China University of Technology (a private university). By using the five-point Likert scale questionnaire, 393 students from the public university and 347 students from the private university participated in the survey. The results reveal that students have greatest concern with sustainability commitment and their university’s role for promoting sustainable development, and have least concern with sustainability curricula and research. Compared with students from the public university, students in the private one more often agree on the importance of sustainable development, and have a higher level of perception about commitment, knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward sustainability. The study findings assert that the higher level of perception from private university’s students is due to active campus sustainability engagement and positive stakeholder relationship managed by university management. The study implies that higher education needs to decentralize sustainable plans and decision-making to students, staff, and faculty, and public universities need to incorporate more sustainability-related context into curriculum and academic project.