2025 College Rankings

The oldest continuously operated university in Texas, Baylor University was founded by Baptists in 1845 when the state was still an independent republic. With its long history of independence, Baylor has managed to resist some, but not all, of the most malignant trends in American higher education.

Baylor maintains a bias-response system, and students are not optimistic about the university’s support for free speech. According to FIRE’s survey, only 26 percent say that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus. Only 20 percent of students tell FIRE that it is “extremely” or “very” likely that Baylor would defend a speaker in a controversy. This tension was on full display in 2019, when the campus briefly experienced a commotion over a speech to be given by conservative commentator Matt Walsh. The talk eventually proceeded as scheduled.

At the same time, we rank the school in our top 20 percent for student ideological pluralism and the top 10 percent for student political tolerance and faculty ideological pluralism. When asked to rank faculty on an ideological continuum, students place their professors well within the “moderate” camp. Nearly 2 percent of faculty are also members of Heterodox Academy, an organization that seeks to encourage free inquiry on campus.

Baylor performs better than many other peer institutions when it comes to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). It maintains a small DEI bureaucracy (fewer than one employee for every 1,000 students), and the school ranks in our top 20 percent for administrative resistance to DEI. Part of the reason is that the bureaucracy is not led by a Chief Diversity Officer, and a negligible number of faculty job postings require a DEI statement. The school has allowed some other forms of activism to circulate within its administration, such as a university land acknowledgment.

The curriculum offered at Baylor is high-quality compared with its peers. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school an A in its What Will They Learn? ratings, which assign letter grades based on how many of seven core subjects are required in the core curriculum or general education program. Baylor also offers a truly outstanding program in Great Texts, one of two undergraduate majors within the Baylor University Honors College. ACTA singles out the Baylor in Washington program, which allows students to take internships focusing on the intersection of faith and public policy while continuing their coursework in the nation’s capital. Still, the school requires students to take a class focusing on DEI to graduate, although it also mandates classes focusing on U.S. history or government.

Even with the quality of the education offered, the price for students can be high. It takes students, on average, about five years to pay back the cost of a Baylor degree, placing the school nearly last in our rankings. Baylor can be a risky investment for students: graduation and retention rates are very close to their predicted results, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grants. Median earnings ten years after initial enrollment are often lower than predicted by the same data.