The Princeton Review debuts its new college “Green Ratings” program, which measures college institutions’ commitment to environmental responsibility.
Robert Franek, The Princeton Review publisher says their Green Rating is a numerical score between 60 to 99, which rates 534 colleges and universities based on their environmentally related policies, practices, and academic offering data. It was collected the previous academic year.
The Princeton Review helps students choose and get in to colleges through its test-prep courses, books and website resources.
The Green Rating scores ate listed on The Princeton Review’s website and in the school print profiles in the 2009 editions of three Princeton Review books: “The Best 368 Colleges,” “The Best Northeastern Colleges” and “The Complete Book of Colleges,” published by Random House.
The Green Ratings were developed in consultation with ecoAmerica, the non-profit environmental marketing agency. ecoAmerica helped formulate criteria for the rating and the rating’s data collection survey and methodology.
Franek says the survey covers three broad areas:
- the school’s overall institutional commitment to environmental responsibility
- whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable
- how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges
The survey asked each institution about energy use, recycling, food, buildings, transportation, academic degrees and courses, action plans and goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions.
There is also a “Green Rating Honor Roll” listing the top 11 colleges that each received the highest Green Rating score. These 11 were six public and five private institutions.
Franek said “The ‘green’ movement on college campuses is far more than an Earth Day recycling project or a dining hall menu of organic food. The commitment that many colleges and their student bodies have made to environmental issues – indeed, to the environment – in their practices, use of resources and academic and research programs is truly compelling. We are pleased to play a role in helping students identify, get into, and study at these schools. It is the students of today who will face and hopefully find solutions for the enormous environmental challenges confronting our planet’s future.”
Student Interest
Students are increasingly interested in attending schools that practice, teach and support environmentally responsible choices, The Princeton Review editors say.
A press release issues today notes that “Among 10,300 college applicants and parents of applicants surveyed by The Princeton Review this year for its annual ‘College Hopes & Worries Survey,’ 63% of respondents overall said they would value having information about a college’s commitment to the environment. Among that cohort, 23% overall said such information would strongly or very much impact their/their child’s decision to apply to or attend the school, with a higher percentage of students (24%) than parents(18%) expressing this opinion.”
Lee Bodner, ecoAmerica Executive Director said “Forward-looking colleges and universities see the alignment between policies that are both good for the environment and good for students. The ratings show that there are a huge number of schools of every type and in every part of the country that are going the extra mile to offer a great quality of life and give students a leg up in the 21st century green economy.”
More in-depth information about the rating and the benefits of attending a green college can be found in The Princeton Review website resources area.
