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September 24, 2008, 03:00 AM ET
Ivies and Elite Institutions Top the 2009 College Sustainability Report Card
The Sustainable Endowments Institute’s 2009 College Sustainability Report Card, which is bound to please many and irritate many more, comes out today.
A release from the institute notes that “only five” of the 15 top-rated schools are from the Ivy League: Brown, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania. Many other colleges in the top 15 are well heeled, if not Ivy: Carleton, Dickinson, Middlebury, and Oberlin Colleges, Stanford University, and the Universities of British Columbia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington.
The F-rated colleges include Brigham Young, Bryant, and Howard Universities and Hillsdale College. It appears that they and others did not respond to the survey.
The report card rates 300 colleges, and an executive summary says that grades for most institutions have gone up. In the category of food and recycling, more than 90 percent of colleges noted that they were buying some local food.
Google Maps displaying the rated colleges, along with their grades, are available for the eastern and western United States.
A college’s reputation could sink on its investment practices. Arizona State University, for example, earned straight As in green building, food and recycling, climate change and energy, and other operational categories. But its “endowment transparency” earned a D and its “investment priorities” earned a C, because “the ASU Foundation’s investment policy provisions do not require consideration of sustainability factors.” Arizona State wound up with a B+, along with Cornell and Duke Universities, the University of Minnesota, and others.
Although the report card provides some sense of which colleges are striving for sustainability, it’s worth keeping in mind that lists like this should not be taken too seriously. Sustainability is an inherently difficult thing to measure, and some sustainability advocates have worried that sustainability-rating systems may — like the U.S. News and World Report rankings — do more harm than good. —Scott Carlson
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