The Norrington and Tompkins Tables rank Oxford and Cambridge colleges, respectively, based on their students’ academic performance. But we want to turn the tables because colleges can’t turn back the clock: we’re students ranking our colleges on the climate commitments that they should have made years ago. Currently, their climate change mitigation has been negligible while, in total, they have over £14bn in assets and an annual income of £848m, a huge amount of capital that they can put behind climate-conscious investments.

How do we drive change, and fast, across these centuries-old institutions? We think a healthy dose of competition will help to focus minds and accelerate radical policy changes within the colleges. Colleges are ranked based on a score out of 100. They’re scored based on a rigorous questionnaire that uses four criteria: decarbonisation plans, divestment commitments, delinking from fossil fuel interests and public disclosures of all of the above.

It’s never been more clear that it is “Code Red for Humanity”. World leaders will meet at the COP 26 Glasgow climate talks in November to determine global climate policy, exposing even more acutely how far behind so many Colleges still are. Prevarication and procrastination need to be replaced by deed and decision. Colleges need to lead and champion the changes demanded by the climate crisis.

CLOC is a coalition of the Oxford and Cambridge student unions, student and community climate justice campaigns, alumni associations, citizen action groups, and concerned citizens in the cities of Oxford & Cambridge.