UO E-clips, July 26-28

Green, greener, greenest (The New York Times): Higher education can’t resist a ranking: best college, best cafeteria, biggest endowment, biggest party school. It says something about what’s important on campus, then, that when the Princeton Review releases its annual guide to colleges this week, it will include a new metric: a “green rating,” giving points for things like “environmentally preferable food,” power from renewable sources and energy-efficient buildings. …. And the Princeton Review will give its top marks to -- ta-da! -- Arizona State, Bates, Binghamton University, the College of the Atlantic, Harvard, Emory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Yale and the Universities of New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington.

The Princeton Review gives 534 colleges 'green ratings' in new 2009 editions of its Annual College Guides and Website Profiles of Schools (Trading Markets): The Princeton Review -- known for its test-prep courses, books and website resources helping students choose and get in to colleges -- today debuts its new "Green Rating" of colleges -- a measure of how environmentally friendly, responsible, and committed the institutions are. … Named to The Princeton Review's "2009 Green Rating Honor Roll" -- a list saluting 11 colleges that each received Green Rating scores of 99 (the highest score) are six public and five private institutions: (in alphabetical order) Arizona State University at the Tempe campus Bates College (Lewiston, ME) Binghamton University (State Univ. of New York at Binghamton) College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, ME) Emory University (Atlanta, GA) Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA) Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH) University of Oregon (Eugene, OR) University of Washington (Seattle, WA) Yale University (New Haven, CT),

UW, UO make honor roll in 'Green Rating' (King5.com, Seattle): The University of Washington and the University of Oregon have made the Princeton Review's honor roll in the new Green Rating of colleges, which measures how environmentally friendly the institutions are. The 11 schools on the Honor Roll received a Green Rating of 99 (the highest score). The University of Washington was noted for being a signatory of the Presidents Climate Commitment, a pledge to develop policies and practices that are climate neutral. … The Review said the University of Oregon is an international leader in sustainability, offering more than 200 sustainability related courses.

10 things you should know about giving (Personal Finance, South Africa): Giving to others helps society and can leave you, the giver, feeling good. But there is the added benefit that you can claim for a deduction against your tax -- provided you make your donation to an organization that meets the taxman’s very specific requirements. The festive season is over, and the orgy of gift giving and collective overspending is done for another year. This overindulgence is typically followed by New Year resolutions -- prompted by remorse -- that are too strenuous for their well-intentioned makers to live up to. … This intuitive knowledge is now backed up by research from economics professor William Harbaugh of the University of Oregon in the United States and his colleagues Ulrich Mayr and Dan Burghart.)

Hynix closure reopens debate over incentives (Register-Guard): With this week’s announced closure of the Hynix Semiconductor plant in west Eugene, so ends the city’s 13-year experiment in using tax breaks and other incentives to bring a huge but volatile high-tech manufacturer to town. But the debate is just beginning: Was it worth it? … Bruce Blonigen, chairman of the University of Oregon’s economics department, said Hynix is a success story: The company’s payment of $56 million in property taxes over 12 years far surpasses that generated per employee by most firms, even though the manufacturer was waived from paying an additional $66 million.