Students at university in Glasgow, Warwick and Oxford demonstrated on Tuesday against a widespread “boycott” of this years’ People and Planet league by universities.
A total of 69 universities failed to submit data to the “green league”, which ranks universities on environmental and ethical factors. The rankings have been published annually since 2007, but this is the first year that there has been far-reaching refusal by universities to take part. This has led to allegations by the table’s publisher of a concerted boycott by some institutions.
Dan Goss, environment and ethics officer at the University of Warwick, says: “Universities have a duty to lead the way on ethical issues and create a world that their students can thrive in in the future.”
Goss led a student rally at the university on Tuesday, which aimed to highlight how little energy and time he says the university is putting into its environmental responsibilities. “The University of Warwick is only concerned with its reputation,” he says. “It has been slipping down the table since 2009 and doesn’t want its shortcomings to be exposed.”
At the University of Glasgow, around 50 students assembled on the university’s main street, with the message: “Turn on the green light for the People and Planet league.”
Zivelle Mamprimaipe, a third year marine biology student at the university, says: “The University of Glasgow’s decision to opt out of the table makes it unaccountable for its actions. The university has always ranked poorly in the table, and now will have no incentive to improve its environmental policies.”
Hannah Smith, who manages the People and Planet league, says: “Today’s actions tell us that students want more transparency and more opportunities to engage with how their university impacts communities and the wider world.”
Universities have cited reasons for not taking part that include the “increasing burden” of providing data, and a methodology that doesn’t account for “the difference between old and newer institutions”.
A spokesman for the University of Warwick says: “We know that we are not alone in finding that the survey has become so over ambitious and so complicated in the information that it requests that we are no longer willing to assist with the survey in its current form.”
The University of Glasgow has been contacted for comment.
Of the 82 universities which did submit data, the top ten is as follows:
1. University of Plymouth
2. University of Worcester
3. Manchester Metropolitan University
4. Nottingham Trent University
5. City University London
6. University of Gloucestershire
7. Bournemouth University
8. University of Wales: Trinity Saint David
9. Edinburgh Napier University
10. Glasgow Caledonian University
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- This article was corrected on 21 January to amend an error in the top-ten rankings.
