Keywords
Learning sustainability
Sustainable higher education management
University students
Student well-being
Abstract
Academic burnout has become an important challenge for sustainable higher education management, as it may undermine students’ ability to maintain continuous and effective learning behaviors. This study examined the relationship between academic burnout and learning sustainability among university students and investigated whether academic burnout could predict learning sustainability after controlling for demographic and academic characteristics. A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was adopted, involving 512 university students. Data were collected using the Academic Burnout Scale and Learning Sustainability Scale. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, independent-samples t-tests, analysis of variance, Pearson correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were conducted. The results indicated that academic burnout was significantly and negatively associated with learning sustainability. Furthermore, academic burnout significantly predicted lower levels of learning sustainability after controlling for gender, academic achievement, and academic year. These findings highlight the importance of integrating student psychological well-being into sustainable higher education management and suggest that reducing academic burnout may contribute to developing supportive environments that promote students’ long-term learning development.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Tianmei Yang, Chenlu Yu, Liyang Chen, Bohao Jiang, Yiming Zhu