The objective of this work is to propose a set of sustainability actions and an evaluation scheme as a strategy to guide Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in their efforts to become more sustainable. Structured into four dimensions (Administrative, Social & Cultural, Academic, and Operational) a set of forty strategic sustainability actions are created (ten per dimension), reflecting state-of-the-art international recommendations for best practices in sustainability. Based on the institutional fulfillment of these actions, three sustainability indices are proposed as a metric for evaluating aspects related to the commitment, coherency and difficulty of execution of the proposed actions. The motivation for this work is to provide a systematic approach of implementation, evaluation and monitoring of sustainability actions, globally accessible to all HEIs, particularly given the demonstrated bias in the existing metrics favoring HEIs in developed economies. The research methodology is structured based on three pillars: (i) documentary and bibliographical research in sustainability (concepts, principles, guidelines, best practices); (ii) review of metrics and sustainability indicators and (iii) validation of the proposed tool through its application to a select group of 21 HEIs recognized for their academic and sustainability excellence. The results reveal a Good degree of commitment (CI equal 0.73) for the 21 HEIs studied, indicating the proposed evaluation scheme is effective in the identification and analysis of institutional commitment and performance of HEIs implementing sustainability initiatives.