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Despite widespread policy support for education for sustainable development in higher education, and a strong academic literature arguing for a radical rethink of curriculum, pedagogy and institutional culture, progress towards the educational reforms advocated remains limited. Based on in-depth interviews with lecturers at a case-study university, this article explores reasons for the slow pace of change, in particular how constraining variables (such as class size, patchy managerial support, perceived irrelevance to some disciplines, and conflict with prevalent higher education pedagogies) inhibit the widespread use of the holistic, interdisciplinary, transformative learning approaches advocated by theorists. Coping strategies employed by lecturers to bring education for sustainable development into their teaching practices are investigated and reviewed in the context of the 'theory of the second best'. We conclude with a plea for greater recognition in the literature of the merits of such 'second-best' approaches in higher education.