2025 College Rankings

Indiana University–Bloomington is the flagship campus of the state’s higher-education system, and it is in a sorry state. For starters, its administration is deeply devoted to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Though no faculty job listings require a DEI statement, there are more than 2.3 DEI employees per 1,000 undergraduates. Indiana is also the recipient of a Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award, a distinction that, viewed objectively, is no honor. In 2025, when facing political pressure, the school removed some DEI language from its website, but the apparatus remains.

Indiana does not hold free speech in high regard. Only 15 percent of students tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that they believe it “extremely” or “very” likely that the administration would defend a speaker’s right to express his views in an offensive speech controversy. The school employs a bias-response system, designed to police opinions that some may consider offensive. FIRE gives the school a “yellow” speech code rating, meaning that its policies could easily be abused to suppress speech.

That said, Indiana is not dominated completely by activist administrators. The school has adopted institutional neutrality, an encouraging sign that it understands that institutions of higher learning need not weigh in on public debates that have nothing to do with their educational missions. The school wisely stayed out of the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court—a sign of restraint likely attributable to the university’s board.

Students are ideologically diverse and fairly tolerant of political views other than their own. For every conservative student at Indiana, there are 1.6 liberals, and the ideological makeup of student political organizations is relatively balanced, too. Students are about equally tolerant of controversial left-wing and right-wing campus speakers. In the last five years, there have been no attempted de-platformings of speakers. As with many other schools, self-censorship is a problem, but it is not as pronounced. About half of Indiana students report to FIRE that they censor themselves at least once a month.

The curriculum at Indiana leaves much to be desired. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school a D 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. The school requires its students to take DEI-focused classes to graduate but neglects more academically relevant subjects, such as history or government. ACTA, however, does identify one area of excellence: the Tocqueville Program, which sponsors lectures, prize competitions, and roundtables devoted to studying freedom, civil society, and citizenship.

Indiana is a fair enough investment. It takes, on average, about two years to pay back the cost of the education, slightly less than our overall 2.3-year average. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment slightly overperform predictions, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients. At the same time, the six-year graduation rate and retention rates meet expectations, based on the same data.