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Green Practices Grow on Campus
But Endowment Sustainability Slower To Take Root
Cambridge, Mass. – College campuses across the United States and Canada are stepping up green practices and policies, with more than two out of three schools showing improved performance over the last year, according to the new College Sustainability Report Card 2008.
While schools are earning higher marks for green initiatives in campus operations, a majority of the wealthiest institutions continue to lag in applying sustainability practices to their endowment investments. The categories with the lowest overall grades were Shareholder Engagement with 66 percent “Fs” and Endowment Transparency with 58 percent “Fs.” In contrast, failing grades averaged only 10 percent across the five campus categories of Administration, Climate Change & Energy, Food & Recycling, Green Building, and Transportation.
The Report Card is the only independent sustainability evaluation of campus operations and endowment investments. Published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, it assesses the 200 public and private universities with the largest endowments, ranging from $230 million to nearly $35 billion.
The results clearly show a “green groundswell” on campuses, with nearly 45 percent of colleges committing to fight climate change through cutting carbon emissions. High-performance green building standards guide new construction at 59 percent of schools, while 42 percent are using hybrid or electric vehicles in transportation fleets. Notably, 37 percent of schools purchase renewable energy and 30 percent produce their own wind or solar energy. A substantial 70 percent buy food from local farms and 64 percent serve fair trade coffee.
“Colleges are rising to the sustainability challenge, but there remains much room for innovation,” said Mark Orlowski, Executive Director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute. “Many schools are missing opportunities to ‘connect the dots,’ and bring leadership on the endowment side into alignment with existing campus sustainability efforts.”
Only Harvard, Dartmouth, University of Washington, Middlebury, Carleton, and University of Vermont performed well enough in all categories to merit the highest overall grade of “A-,” earning them the distinction of College Sustainability Leaders.
The Juilliard School, Howard University, Regent University, and Samford University yielded overall “F” grades, followed by 21 schools carrying a grade of “D-.”
The cumulative grade distribution for the 200 schools was “A,” 3 percent; “B,” 28 percent; “C,” 42 percent; “D,” 25 percent; and “F,” 2 percent. Grades were determined by reviewing publicly available information, conducting surveys of appropriate school officials, and then assessing performance across 39 indicators in eight main categories.
Other key findings of the latest Report Card include:
• Carleton College, Northeastern University, University of Notre Dame, University of Southern California and University of Virginia demonstrated the greatest improvements – as much as one and a half grades.
• Twenty-five schools achieved Campus Sustainability Leader status by scoring high marks in all five campus categories (at least an “A-” average).
• Only Carleton, Dartmouth and Williams were recognized as Endowment Sustainability Leaders, with an “A-” or better across the three endowment categories.
• Schools performed best in the Food & Recycling category, with 29 percent earning “As.”
• More than one-third of schools have full-time sustainability staff, and more than two-thirds have a Web site dedicated to campus sustainability.
The College Sustainability Report Card 2008 is the second such report from The Sustainable Endowments Institute, and is published as part of the Institute’s broader effort to encourage discussion on sustainability in higher education. The Institute, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, receives funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation, among others.
Download the current edition (2008):
Download Report Card 2008 (3MB PDF)
Report Card 2008 Executive Summary (412K PDF)
Download an Individual School Profile
Download previous edition (2007):
Previous Edition of Full Report (2MB PDF)
Previous Edition of Executive Summary (315K PDF)
Previous Edition of Individual School Profiles
