Participation in SIERRA magazine's Cool Schools ranking is open to all four-year, degree-granting undergraduate colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Schools that submitted complete, updated data by our deadline were eligible to be ranked this year.

In 2017, SIERRA received 227 complete responses from qualified institutions. Once schools submitted their data, our researchers scored each response and ranked each of the participating institutions. There was no cost for participation, and no affiliation or relationship between a school and the Sierra Club or its employees, past or present, influenced the ranking.

DATA COLLECTION

As in past years, we collaborated with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) to gather the raw data for our rankings. The association has created what it calls its STARS Reporting Tool to give colleges and universities a method for tracking and assessing their sustainability programs. This is a self-reporting survey—responses are not audited for accuracy—designed to help higher education administrators understand all aspects of campus sustainability and to compare their progress with other schools. We accepted submissions from each of AASHE’s two reporting tools—STARS 2.0 and STARS 2.1.

Schools did not need to be members of AASHE's STARS program to take part in the survey. Once school administrators completed the survey, they shared a snapshot of their responses with SIERRA. 

This year’s deadline for submitting information through the AASHE STARS system was March 3, 2017. Any information submitted to STARS between March 23, 2016 and March 3, 2017 was eligible for scoring.

We also asked schools to complete an additional question not covered by the AASHE survey. We asked institutions to detail what, if any, moves they have made to divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies. Schools that did not complete our fossil fuel divestment question were still eligible to participate.

RANKING THE SCHOOLS

We then processed the raw data through a custom-built formula that scored the schools across 62 questions, with each of those questions given a specific numeric value on a 1,000-point scale. The formulas and scores were then double-checked by an independent data analyst. You can find our Scoring Key here. 

In 2016, our scoring methodology was updated to reflect trends in campus sustainability. In past years, we awarded partial points on many questions even if schools reported no progress in that area. This was something of a hangover from the earliest iterations of our rankings systems, when we felt that it was important to reward schools simply for conducting audits and surveys of their sustainability operations. Since we launched the Cools Schools rankings 11 years ago, higher education has come a long way in terms of incorporating sustainability values. At this point, it’s no longer sufficient for schools to simply survey their operations and curricula; we, along with our 3 million members and supporters, are expecting measurable progress. 

The 2017 scoring methodology follows the same basic logic as 2016, though a few questions were eliminated and the scoring values were increased for some questions.  

Our scoring key is a reflection of the broader priorities of the Sierra Club. For example, we award a significant percentage of points in the areas of campus energy use, transportation, and fossil fuel divestment because the Sierra Club believes that progress in these sectors is essential for addressing the climate crisis. While our ranking is fair, transparent, and accurate, we make no claim that it is the ultimate arbiter of campus sustainability. 

Our results show that while many universities are making admirable progress, no school has yet attained complete sustainability. In 2017, the top-rated university scored 779.58 out of a possible 1,000 points, proving that, in higher education as in the rest of society, there is much room for improvement.

The United States has more than 2,000 four-year colleges and universities, and we acknowledge that many schools that care about the environment don't appear on SIERRA’s list. 

That said, our rankings can serve as a guide for prospective students, current students, administrators and alumni to compare colleges’ commitments to environmentalism. It also serves to spur healthy competition among schools, raise environmental standards on campus, and publicly reward the institutions that work hard to protect the planet.