Last night at Boston Green Drinks, we heard a presentation from Mark Orlowski and Elizabeth Ginsburg from the Sustainable Endowments Institute, and for me, apart from the details imparted, it was another lesson in how many different ways the sustainable future can be sliced.

I don't personally care too much more about what the campus set is doing, any more than most other segments, but Orlowski, the institute's founder, made a good case that many people do, including prospective students: "The Princeton Review asked 10,000 prospective students if they would consider sustainability performance in their school choice, and 63 percent said they would."

Schools can neither opt in or opt out of the process. The institute sends three questionnaires to each school, on questions of administration, food service, and endowment, and that 290 of the 300 replied to at least one of the surveys. When a school doesn't answer, the institute uses publicly available data, and then gives the schools a chance to challenge the accuracy.

Orlowski said schools, in general, are doing far better on the facilities side of the question than their endowment practices. In many cases, he said, schools won't even disclose who they're invested in, never mind how they include sustainability issues in their choices, or in their shareholder voting.

The institute expresses its ratings in an annual report card. A hundred schools were rated the first year, 200 the second, and 300 this year. No one gets a A, but this year, 15 got an A-, including Harvard, UVM, Middlebury, and Dartmouth in New England. Four schools were graded F: BYU, Howard, Hillsdale in Michigan, and Bryant College in RI.

Orlowski said two-thirds of the schools improved their scores between years 1 and 2, and the same proportion improved again between years 2 and 3.