It’s that time of year again: the College Sustainability Report Card 2010 has launched. Released on the brand spankin’ new GreenReportCard.org website by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, the annual publication provides school profiles and grades along with exclusive insights about sustainability in higher education. What grade is your school taking home to the folks?
The report reveals that despite budget-breaking investment losses and widely fluctuating energy costs, many schools became greener during the last year, earning higher grades on the College Sustainability Report Card 2010. The average overall grade was still a “C+”, but 53 percent of schools earned an overall grade of “B-”, compared to only 38 percent in last year’s Report Card.
Now in its fourth year, the College Sustainability Report Card covers the colleges and universities with the 300 largest endowments in the United States and Canada, as well as 32 additional schools that applied for inclusion. The profiled schools have combined holdings representing more than $325 billion in endowment assets, or more than 95 percent of all university endowments.
Features on the website include:
- Compare Report Card of rival schools
- Overall College Sustainability Leaders
- Access to over 1,100 surveys responses
- Interactive map
- Endowment Sustainability Leaders
For the first time, the Institute is offering universal access to 1,100 sustainability survey responses about campus, dining and student initiatives, as well as endowment investment. Access to endowment information is intended to foster constructive dialogue about investment in clean energy and in community development, as well as about sustainability considerations in shareholder voting.
Sixty-eight percent of 12,715 high school students applying to college, who were recently polled by the Princeton Review, said that they would value having information about a college’s commitment to the environment. To help students search, the Report Card website offers the ability to compare up to 10 schools at a time.
Students can also explore schools by geographic region on the interactive map. This feature enables users to click on a college in a particular area to see all grades listed by category and to link directly to that school’s full profile. Other popular searches include listings of schools by athletic league, environmental studies majors, sustainability jobs on campus, renewable energy use and dozens of other options.
The Report Card provides a resource for high school students to integrate college sustainability into their search for schools and for current students to motivate their schools to make the grade. We work hard for our grades; so should they.
