Grading green

The College Sustainability Report Card helps students evaluate the environmental impact of their campuses.

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PlentyMag.com

Fri, Jul 24 2009 at 5:31 PM

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Education, Schools

LEARNING AND LABOR: Oberlin received an A- for the 2009 report card. (Photo: arobotar/Flickr)

Look alive, high school seniors bored to tears by the mind numbing quagmire of essays and scantrons that is the college application process. The U.S. News and World Report and Princeton Review highlight campuses that boast beautiful views, thriving intramural sports, large endowments and even larger parties.

But the Sustainable Endowments Institute just made narrowing the field of colleges and universities a lot easier for prospective students by providing what other ranking systems do not: a comprehensive study of campus environmental initiatives. The institute’s second annual College Sustainability Report Card profiles 200 schools and gives each a green grade.

Not since elementary school has a report card been so thoroughly supplemented with written evaluations (gasp) documenting a wide variety of behavior (eek) and, for the handful of schools featured in last year’s report, a progress chart (gulp). From food and investment priorities to transportation and building, nothing gets by the watchful eye of the College Sustainability Report Card.

To see which schools are at the head of the class and which need to work their way out of the dunce’s corner, download the PDF.

Story by Jim Sherwin. This article originally appeared in Plenty in October 2007. The story was added to MNN.com in July 2009.