2025 College Rankings

Hamilton College is named for one of its first trustees, Alexander Hamilton, though the Founding Father would likely take a dim view of what his namesake school has become. Like many small liberal arts colleges, Hamilton has embraced activism at the expense of education.

The school’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is extensive. Its DEI bureaucracy includes roughly two administrators per 1,000 undergraduates and is led by a Chief Diversity Officer. Forty percent of faculty job postings require a DEI statement. Hamilton is also firmly aligned with activist causes: it filed an amicus brief in support of affirmative action in the Students for Fair Admissions case, signaling that in admissions, diversity takes precedence over merit.

Hamilton’s record on free speech is mixed. Students express only lukewarm confidence in the administration’s willingness to protect free expression. The school maintains a bias-response system to monitor speech that may be deemed offensive. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) gives Hamilton a “yellow” speech code rating, indicating that its policies are prone to abuse and could be used to suppress speech.

Hamilton’s faculty is an ideological bloc. When students are asked to place their professors on an ideological scale—where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative”—they give faculty an average rating of 2.3. In the 2023–24 election cycle, the vast majority of faculty campaign donations went to liberal or Democratic causes. Few professors belong to organizations that promote free inquiry in the classroom.

Students are similarly homogenous. For every conservative student, there are nearly ten liberals, and no conservative political groups exist on campus. As expected, students tend to be more tolerant of controversial views from the left than from the right, especially when it comes to campus speakers. Still, the overall speech climate among students is relatively healthy. There have been no speaker disinvitations or de-platforming attempts in the last five years, and rates of self-censorship are comparatively low: 46 percent of students report censoring themselves at least once a month—a modest figure, by national standards.

Hamilton’s curriculum is abysmal. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school an F 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. While students must complete DEI-focused courses to graduate, the school does not require instruction in more academically fundamental subjects like history or government. One bright spot, however, is the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization—an independent center that supports academic societies, colloquia, and lectures dedicated to the study of freedom, democracy, and capitalism.

Hamilton falls short in preparing graduates for career success. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment lag expectations by over $12,000, based on data from students’ SAT scores and Pell Grant status. The time required to pay back the cost of a Hamilton education is also slightly above average—nearly 2.5 years, compared with our overall average of 2.3.