Social Sustainability from the Student Perspective: Cultural Identity, Belonging, and Institutional Transformation in Saudi Higher Education

Social sustainability is a stated goal of higher education, but institutional commitments do not show how students experience inclusion, belonging, and cultural recognition in everyday university life. This exploratory qualitative field study examined how Saudi university students understand cultural identity and relate it to social sustainability in one regional public university. Twelve students from eight colleges took part in semi-structured interviews conducted in Arabic; reflexive thematic analysis generated two themes, each with two subthemes. Participants described cultural identity as dynamic and enacted through relationships. They did not frame institutional openness and cultural continuity as competing demands, and their accounts associated social sustainability chiefly with respect, recognition, belonging, inclusion, and participation. These findings are preliminary and do not establish causal mechanisms or represent Saudi students generally. For higher-education managers, they indicate the value of assessing students’ accounts alongside institutional indicators and of creating curricular and co-curricular settings for respectful interaction. Further multi-site research is needed to examine variation within Saudi student populations and test the transferability of these interpretations.