The College Sustainability Report Card was a program from the Sustainable Endowments Institute that ran from 2007-2011. It was the first comprehensive list of sustainability profiles of institutions of higher education and it assessed the 300 schools in the US and Canada with the largest endowments along with around 20 other institutions who chose to be involved. The Sustainable Endowments Institute defines their mission as:
“Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
College and universities, as leaders of innovation in our society, have the potential to demonstrate sustainable principles in their campus operations and endowment policies. Their examples can provide a road map for others to follow”.
Third party researchers completed the assessment of these schools by collecting publicly available data and administering different surveys for college staff on campus operations, dining services, and endowment investment practices and one survey for student environmental leaders on student activities. After this information was compiled and verified, a profile was composed and a letter grade (F to A) assigned. The scoring was broken down into 48 indicators in 9 different categories: administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities, and stakeholder engagement. Various indicators also have extra credit for innovative and comprehensive programs.
Notably, all the data used to compile the grade is easily accessible online, even survey responses. For example, check out Lewis and Clark’s 2011 results here.
On March 30, 2012, the Sustainable Endowments Institute suspended The College Sustainability Report Card in order to focus its efforts on facilitating a large-scale investment in energy efficiency. Over its five years of data collection, great gains in sustainability programs were observed.
The same year, before leaving college sustainable assessment entirely, the Sustainable Endowments Institute collaborated with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), Sierra Magazine and The Princeton Review to develop a comprehensive survey for colleges and universities called the Campus Sustainability Data Collector. This allowed institutions to streamline the data collection process and share the data between AASHE’s STARS program (which was launched in 2010) and third parties like Princeton and the Sierra Club.