2025 College Rankings

Pepperdine University is a Christian college with a reputation for moderation. Pepperdine’s faculty is among the most ideologically diverse of any school that we studied, second only to Claremont McKenna College, another California institution. Students recognize this balance: when asked to place their professors on an ideological continuum, on average, they answer “moderate.” More than 2 percent of Pepperdine faculty, a large number in our rankings, are members of the Heterodox Academy, an organization that promotes the flourishing of free speech on campus.

Students tend to be ideologically diverse as well. Although students tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that, on average, they are equally tolerant of left-wing and right-wing speakers, there has been one attempt at de-platforming a campus speaker in recent years. In 2021, law students attempted to disinvite legal scholar Eugene Volokh, a leading expert on the First Amendment, over allegations of the usage of racial slurs in his professional writing. The administration, to its credit, denied the petition to cancel his speech.

Only 14 percent of Pepperdine students, when polled by FIRE, say that it is “extremely” or “very” likely that the administration would defend a speaker’s right to express his views in a controversy over offensive speech. FIRE does not rank Pepperdine’s speech policies very highly. For example, Pepperdine requires some events to be “suitable for family audiences.” But this comes as no surprise to students and parents; Pepperdine does not hide its institutional religious commitments. The university does not employ a bias-response system, designed to monitor and discourage speech that some may find offensive.

Pepperdine has a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) office. That bureaucracy numbers about 2.5 employees for every 1,000 undergraduates at a school with about 10,000 students. To its credit, Pepperdine’s administration is not enmeshed in other forms of administrative activism that plague many other colleges that we studied.

The school’s curriculum is a mixed bag. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives Pepperdine a B 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. But the school mandates that students take courses focusing on DEI to graduate while neglecting to impose the same rule for civics or basic U.S. history. Still, ACTA identifies one area of excellence: the Pepperdine School of Public Policy, a two-year master’s program designed to prepare participants to navigate today’s polarized political climate.

Pepperdine provides limited return on investment for its graduates. Graduation and retention rates fall below the expected number, based on SAT scores and Pell Grants received by entrants. Retention rates are particularly poor. The predicted rate is 92 percent, but the actual rate is only 88 percent. On average, it takes Pepperdine students about 3.3 years to pay back the cost of their education—much longer than the 2.3-year average of our entire list of schools. Median earnings ten years after initial enrollment are in line with predictions.