It seems like college rankings can be found just about anywhere, ranking just about any component of higher education. 2nd Green Revolution has covered a few of these in past, including the Sierra Club and Princeton Review’s ranking of green colleges. This earlier rendition of the “Cool Schools” ranking contains a number of schools that are on this year’s list, but there has also been a fair bit of turnover in the past two years.
While it may not come as much of a surprise, half of the schools are in California. Curiously enough though, University of California, Berkeley (which was ranked in the top ten two years ago) was not one of the schools on the Sierra Club’s current list. 118 schools participated in the survey, which is part of the September-October issue of the Sierra Club’s magazine. For the full ranking click here. The 118 schools falls far short of the 311 that were profiled by the Princeton Review’s report earlier this summer. These rankings considered ten categories including “energy supply, efficiency, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, administration, financial investments, and a catch-all called ‘other initiatives.’”
Some schools choose not to participate at all, while others may decide that an organization like Princeton Review, which is known for college preparation, is a better fit for ranking schools. It seems that the initial ranking from the two organizations offered a nice synergy of environmental awareness (on behalf of the Sierra Club) and Princeton Review’s knowledge of higher education. Instead there are now two separate rankings. With all that in mind, here is the Top Ten from the Sierra Club, starting with the “greenest” university.
- University of Washington
- Green Mountain College (VT)
- University of California, San Diego
- Warren Wilson College (NC)
- Stanford University (CA)
- University of California, Irvine
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- University of California, Davis
- Evergreen State College (WA)
- Middlebury College (VT)
As always, it is recommended to take a look at the methodology to find out how these rankings were determined.
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