2025 College Rankings

Macalester College emphasizes diversity in its promotional material—but not ideological diversity. Students, faculty, and administrators all skew in one direction, making the school a stronghold for one-track progressive thinking.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives play a massive role in Macalester’s administration. The school has a large DEI bureaucracy, headed by a Chief Diversity Officer, with 5.5 employees per 1,000 undergraduates. Additionally, 75 percent of faculty job listings require a diversity statement. The administration is fixated on other forms of activism as well. In the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court, Macalester filed a brief in support of affirmative action, a confirmation that the school values diversity over merit, even in admissions.

Macalester is highly limited in its support of free speech. Less than half the student body tells the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration values free expression. The school has implemented the use of a bias-response system, designed to police the airing of opinions that some may consider offensive. FIRE gives Macalester a “red” speech code rating, meaning that its policies explicitly restrict speech.

The faculty skew wildly in one direction in their beliefs. Students perceive them as overwhelmingly liberal. When asked to place their professors on an ideological continuum, where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative,” they put them at 1.9, on average. Nearly 100 percent of faculty campaign donations went to liberal or Democratic causes in the 2023–24 election cycle. Still, more than 2 percent of faculty members, a large number by our metrics, belong to Heterodox Academy, an organization that promotes free inquiry on campus.

Students are among the least ideologically diverse of any school that we studied. For every conservative at Macalester, there are ten liberal students. Worse, Macalester ranked 95 out of 100 for student body political tolerance. Indeed, a majority of students believe it permissible to silence those who do not agree with reigning orthodoxies. For example, 60 percent of students tell FIRE that it is “sometimes” or “always” acceptable to shout down a controversial speaker; 35 percent—a large number, in our estimation—say the same of blocking other students from attending such events. That said, self-censorship is not as serious a problem at Macalester as it is at many other schools: only 37 percent of students tell FIRE that they silence themselves at least once a month.

The curriculum at Macalester is poor. 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 places no emphasis on U.S. history or government classes in its graduation requirements but doesn’t force DEI-focused classes on its students, either.

Macalester is a risky investment. It takes, on average, 3.5 years to pay back the cost of the education, longer than our overall average of 2.3 years. Graduates also tend to struggle early in their careers. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment underperform expectations by over $14,000, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients.