Green Rankings Validity

In a recent article by The Chronicle of Higher Education, colleges and universities have become frustrated with green rankings and has pushed them to develop their own.

Colleges have been subjected to all sorts of ratings, rankings, and grades on their green sensibilities in recent years—and not all of them have been welcome. Sustainability directors increasingly find themselves filling out surveys from organizations like the Sustainable Endowments Institute, Sierra magazine, and the Princeton Review, each with its own twist on questions about energy use, mass transit, water conservation, and so on. The data collection is becoming a real burden, they say.

Now, in a recent letter to colleges, the Sustainable Endowments Institute has floated a proposal: How would you like to pay $700 for the pleasure of filling out a survey? That money would help the institute render a grade—it could be an A-minus, or maybe a D-plus—for its highly publicized College Sustainability Report Card.

These independent rating systems become more frustrating for administrators when their colleges get dismal scores—and it's not always clear how those scores are calculated. Two years ago, a researcher at Sierra revealed to The Chronicle that the magazine's ratings were assigned somewhat haphazardly, based on the impressions of staff members. While the magazine's editors say they have beefed up their methodology, Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost for sustainability at Ithaca, says she still wonders how those data might be graded or fairly compared against other colleges'. For example, the Sierra survey asks how many students drive to campus in cars.

"Great question," Ms. Brown says, "but I don't know if you figure out how meaningful that is if you're in an urban setting or a rural campus like ours. How is that percentage useful for anyone to know?"

All of those green ratings look even less enticing now that colleges have come up with their own rating system through the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, better known as Stars, made its official debut three months ago and already has about 130 institutions participating. It was developed by college sustainability experts through an extensive, collaborative process —in part to allow colleges to compare their progress with that of their peers, but also to take the place of the various sustainability ratings that have popped up in recent years. A Stars evaluation is valid for three years; Stars organizers say that timeline is meant to ease the pressure of data collection.

"From the way I see it, it's time for all of us to move on to Stars," says Gioia Thompson, sustainability director at the University of Vermont. She balks at the idea of paying for the SEI survey, which can take up to a week of her time to complete.

It's possible that independent rating systems like SEI bring a peculiar public pressure that forces change. The Stars system was conceived as a positive evaluation of college sustainability. Although the colleges will get an honest evaluation of their performance, which will be publicly available, the system won't engage in publicizing dismal scores for colleges that are coming up short, says Meghan Fay Zahniser, who manages the Stars program for AASHE.

That is one role that the Sustainable Endowments Institute does not shy away from. The institute has handed out a good number of C's, D's, and F's on its College Sustainability Report Card. Those scores have sometimes been picked up by newspaper columnists and environmental advocates, who then blast the poor-scoring colleges for slacking.

An interesting project would be to have a student led project with higher education students in conducting an assessment of Ole Miss by working with the Office of Sustainability and perhaps creating a student organization. (I am unaware if we have one currently). It is absurd to pay $700 to participate in a survey as many of the administrators also mentioned in the article, which should be conversely; especially when post-secondary institutions have been receiving C's, D's, and F's on their report card. I think it is a great idea for institutions to focus on saving energy especially when building new buildings. However, I am curious to know how many new facilities will be created with budget deficits institutions are facing. What are some initiatives Ole Miss is working on to produce a greener campus? The signs are admirable that hang from the poles, but are we as students, faculty, administrators, faculty, and staff doing enough? Check out the schedule of events for next week's Green Week @ Ole Miss

http://www.olemiss.edu/green/green_week.html

This article can be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Frustration-With-Green-Rank/65014/