Founded in 2005 by Rockefeller Philanthropy, the Sustainable Endowments Institute works to transform colleges’ investment policies and campus practices into something greener than the ivy in spring. Last week, the SEI released a report card for the nation’s 100 leading schools, – judging them on issues such as green building, endowment transparency, recycling, etc. – and the results were largely discouraging. Only 26 schools received grades of B- or higher, while 20 got Ds.

Given their larger mission to both educate and serve as an example for society, universities should be pushing themselves towards sustainability harder than any individual or private company. With a combined endowment of $258 billion, these hundred schools have no real excuse besides the stubbornness of their administration and the institutions’ own intransigence.

Congratulations to Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Williams for scoring the highest grade achieved, A-. While Harvard’s score was almost certainly the result of grade inflation, Yale’s score read like my sophomore year report card: all A’s and a C.

Stupid Latin 121…te odeo, interfice te cochleare!

Link to SEI
Link to list of individual school’s reports

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See Also: Green Office Supplies: Part II,Google Offers Green Vacation Advice,Building High-Tech Bridges or Electronic Waste Pipelines?,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.