University Sustainability and DEI Semantic Decoupling Dataset

This dataset was prepared for the study titled “Data-Driven Governance or Symbolic Alignment? Measuring Semantic Decoupling in University Sustainability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Agendas.” The dataset contains curated university-level textual and analytical data used to examine the relationship between institutional discourse on sustainability and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and related performance indicators. The dataset includes institutional discourse texts collected from publicly available university sources, together with derived variables generated during the analysis. These variables include semantic discourse scores, standardized discourse and performance measures, semantic decoupling scores, behavioral profile classifications, text-length indicators, and word-count measures. The dataset was used to assess whether universities’ sustainability and DEI-related narratives are substantively aligned with measurable performance signals or whether they reflect symbolic alignment. The analytical workflow combines text-based computational analysis, zero-shot classification, standardization procedures, and semantic decoupling measurement. The resulting dataset enables further research on university governance, sustainability communication, DEI agendas, symbolic management, institutional accountability, and the relationship between discourse and performance in higher education. The dataset is intended for academic and non-commercial research purposes. Users should cite this dataset and the associated study when using or adapting the data.