A few weeks ago, hot on the heels of our Report Card, came Sierra's annual "Cool Schools" feature, profiling some truly tremendous campus efforts. Days later, Plenty’s Green Campuses 3.0 highlighted a few more. Grist weighed in with a “Top 15” list of schools more recently, and supplemented their offerings today with a special series on eco-activism on campus, which focuses on both student work and operational changes. I could go on with many more illustrious examples of the media (finally!) paying attention to campus climate efforts, but since these are just a few of the publications that have written recently about greening efforts in higher education, and many of them have already gotten coverage on this blog, I’ll stop there. Back-to-school days are here for sure! 

Unfortunately, these articles only rarely delve into the full-length research studies done by university reviewers and nonprofits. The magazine coverage is cool, but not nearly as meticulous in its methodology as some of these studies, as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education's Buildings & Grounds blog. 

Our Campus Environment 2008 report falls into this second category, by covering over 1,000 schools in the US rather than cherry-picking a few for a top ten list. Princeton Review rated 534 schools in its version, and next week the Sustainable Endowments Institute is scheduled to release its own Green Report Card, which covers 300 schools that were selected based on their large endowments. AASHE is in the pilot stages of another system, called STARS, which is intended to create a common standard for measuring sustainability in higher education. For a more in-depth comparison of the differences between these reports (and a few additional ones), see this exellent article from Inside Higher Ed, which explains the differences in methodology and intent of the various systems. 

The idea of rankings and ratings can be a sticky one. When dealing with so many schools, impartiality is usually easy, but deciding how to weight factors is definitely not. Because we here at NWF’s Campus Ecology tend to focus on climate issues as the greatest threat to wildlife and our own human habitat, we are more likely to prioritize renewable energy purchasing than something like a small-scale local food co-op, since the first is more measurable and directly related to reducing GHG emissions. However, that small food co-op may be student-driven (as opposed to a facilities dept. decision), and therefore more likely to engage youth leaders that will go out in to the world and effect all kinds of change. It is also more personally relatable, since such food usually tastes better and puts local communities on a more direct path towards overall sustainability. Depending on the values of an organization, prioritizing is difficult, and it’s rare that any single entity can cover everything it wants to in a coherent way. 

That difficulty is why we're glad that campus environmental work is getting so much attention. From the outside, it probably looks like a lot of noise and competing reports, but most of us in here tend to look at it as filling in each others’ holes, raising new solutions and doing our best to support the colleges at the forefront of investing in a new energy future. Surely, it’s a wonderful development that 2008 seems to be one of those years when forces combine.