This is a guide to 286 U.S. colleges and universities that have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to sustainability. While it differs from our Best Colleges guidebooks in that it does not report information based on our surveys of students attending the schools, it very much embodies our philosophy that finding your “best fit” school means looking at everything from the school’s academic offerings to its extracurricular options and now, even its commitment to going green. We recognize that there is a rising interest among students in attending colleges that practice, teach, and support environmentally responsible choices. Among the almost 16,000 college applicants and parents of applicants The Princeton Review surveyed for its 2009 College Hopes & Worries Survey, 66 percent of respondents said they would value having information about a college's commitment to the environment. Moreover, of that cohort, 24 percent said such information would “very much” impact their decision to apply to or attend the school.
To produce this book we partnered with the United States Green Building Council, an outstanding national nonprofit organization that promotes sustainability in the design and construction of buildings. With more students going to college now than ever before, educational institutions are busy building new dormitories, new classrooms, and new administrative offices. USGBC helps provide a layer of accountability for college campuses seeking ways to make their new capital projects as environmentally-responsible as possible. The USGBC-developed Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system provides guidelines for assessing green performance and meeting sustainability goals in the construction of buildings. Many of the schools profiled in these pages have LEED-certified buildings on campus, but that was not a criterion for inclusion in the book.
All of the schools in this book -- whether or not their buildings are LEED-certified and whether or not they are profiled in our "Best Colleges" flagship book -- are exemplary green institutions. Each and every one of them understands the urgent need to implement an infrastructure that will allow students to live and learn sustainably.