Type of the article: Research Article
Higher education plays an important role in advancing the sustainable development paradigm. The corresponding contribution of universities is measured, in particular, by the QS Sustainability Rankings, which summarizes nine comprehensive indicators for assessing various aspects of sustainability. The study aims to analyze the structure of the QS Sustainability Rankings for leading global universities and identify the indicators that most significantly distinguish the ranked profiles of these institutions. The study covered the top 30 universities in the QS World University Rankings: Sustainability 2026 (31 universities due to tied ranking scores). The Pearson coefficient showed a fairly strong pairwise relationship with the ranking score for indicators such as “Equality”, “Environmental Research”, “Impact of Education”, and “Employability & Opportunities”; however, the typology of university profiles is more complex. Therefore, based on the principal component analysis method, the indicators most strongly associated with the variation of universities in the Ranking were identified: “Health and Wellbeing”, “Knowledge Exchange”, and “Environmental Sustainability”. A cluster analysis showed that university profiles in the QS Sustainability Rankings vary across clusters: cluster I (17 institutions) is predominantly oriented toward strengthening social impact, cluster II (7 institutions) toward strengthening environmental impact, and cluster III (7 institutions) has a mixed orientation. Therefore, based on classification analysis, a combination of indicators (“Environmental Sustainability”, “Impact of Education”, “Health and Wellbeing”) was identified as most strongly distinguishing the obtained clusters, that is, differentiating the ranked profiles of leading universities. Other institutions can use this to substantiate the priorities of their sustainable transformation strategy.