SustainaBul, or how sustainable is your university?

Is your university trying to save water and energy? Is sustainability a focus in teaching and research? And what about the canteen? The idealistic Students for Tomorrow have assessed thirteen higher education institutions. This is the fifteenth time they have produced their SustainaBul ranking.

TU Delft is in the middle of the pack (PDF in Dutch) with a silver medal. Van Hall Larenstein has equalled Wageningen University’s record: for the sixth time, this university of applied sciences tops the rankings. In second and third place are VU University Amsterdam and Wageningen University. Avans University of Applied Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen are also among the frontrunners, say the creators of the rankings.

Around forty rankers contributed to the rankings. They searched for publicly available information and sent a questionnaire to the institutions. Educational institutions were able to respond to a preliminary outcome and, if desired, provide additional information. The ranking no longer includes exact scores. Instead, you can see across eight different themes whether the institutions are in the leading group (gold), score averagely (silver) or remain in the lower ranks (bronze). The creators want to place less emphasis on mutual competition, according to the press release.

The students have included all universities and the largest universities of applied sciences in the ranking. Art colleges and pabo’s (teacher training colleges for primary education) are not included in the list. Inholland University of Applied Sciences is at the very bottom of the list. (HOP, BB)