Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to optimize the Environmental Attitudes Inventory (EAI) and second, to establish a baseline of the difference in environmental attitudes between first and final year students, taken at the start of a university's declaration of commitment to EfS. Design/methodology/approach: The psychometrically designed EAI was used to overcome the problems and limitations of the much-used, but controversial, revised New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale. The performance of the original 72-item EAI was compared with our 37-item reduced form using a population of first- and final-year university students. Findings: The reduced 37-item EAI provides a reliable and valid tool for investigating structured, multi-dimensional environmental attitudes of university students while reducing response burden and increasing response and completion rates compared with the longer versions of the EAI. Research limitations/implications: No attempt is made to link elements of the university experience with changes in attitude between first- and third-year students. The authors expect the 12-faceted EAI to provide more detailed feedback on the affective outcomes of EfS initiatives than currently used instruments. Originality/value: This research contributes to establishing the EAI as a gold standard with which to monitor students' environmental attitudes. Although most studies aimed at understanding the impact of EfS measure attitude change over relatively short periods of time--typically using the brief NEP scale administered immediately before and after a specific semester course--the approach developed here is designed to detect attitudinal change that may be ascribed to the entire university experience between students' first and final year.