Talking about Sustainability and Sustainable Development, from the Higher Education Institutions in Colombia, sought to recognize the strategies, projects or actions, implemented, as a strengthening of the educational offer, the social positioning and the general contribution to the social welfare of these institutions. The starting point was to recognize that sustainability is the approach and style with which the institutions are made and planned, and Sustainable Development is the context to which they must contribute. To this end, we worked from a qualitative methodological approach, from a population sample that statistically allows inferring the behavior of the 163 institutions grouped together, from the 268 recognized active institutions in Colombia. The analysis allowed to identify that there are three approaches to work on sustainability in the university institutions, sustainable campus, sustainability policy and environmental management and within them, work is done on protection and conservation of resources, consumption and use of water and energy, solid waste, environmental education, sustainable infrastructure and administrative infrastructure and with very little scope the explicit transformation towards the sustainability of the academic offer. All approaches are supported by the environmental component and recognize the importance of acting in the social and economic aspects of sustainability. There is still a long way to go for sustainability to be a transversal element in the offer of academic programs, there is still a long way to go because there are few university advances to explicitly incorporate methodologies for sustainable development. There is recognition of the importance of contributing to the 2030 sustainable development agenda and the SDGs are recognized as the sustainability commitment of global visibility.
Key words: University sustainability, Sustainability policy, sustainable campus, university environmental management.
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