Typology of world's top universities through sustainable development

Sustainable university is one of the emerging issues that academics have been trying to achieve in recent decades. Therefore, considering the actions of top universities regarding sustainable university and using their experiences and their methods is a hidden treasure of knowledge that can be suitable for other universities on the sustainability road. In this study, an attempt was made to classify the top universities in terms of functional variations of sustainable development.The research was applied in terms of purpose and was conducted by utilizing descriptive, comparative and content analysis methods. A purposeful sample was selected from the world's top universities. Their activities in the field of sustainable development were reviewed using the information available on the universities' websites and related documents. The findings of this study suggested a five-dimensional model for the typology of universities from the perspective of sustainable development. Based on the percentage of model variations, sustainable first-clsss universities are at the "start of the path" level, and second- and third-class universities are at the "path to success" and "leading" levels, respectively. In addition, it is found that universities need to have the basic requirements for being a sustainable university and if a university has these requirements then can be placed in one of the categories of a sustainable university. Such a typology enables universities to identify and characterize their university in terms of the functional diversity of sustainable development and consider the actions that make it possible to move on the path of sustainable development