2025 College Rankings

The University of Arizona is a large institution and, like many schools of its size, faces strong pressure to conform to prevailing educational trends. For the most part, it has resisted.

Arizona’s administration has shown signs of activist influence. The university has adopted a range of commitments unrelated to its core academic mission, including land acknowledgments, preferred pronouns, and environmental pledges. It also maintains a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy, though relatively modest in scale. With more than 40,000 undergraduates, the school employs slightly more than one DEI staffer per 1,000 students. Notably, none of the university’s faculty job postings requires a DEI statement.

At the same time, Arizona’s administration generally respects free expression. More than one-third of students told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects speech on campus. The university has adopted the Chicago Principles, affirming its commitment to open discourse. FIRE gives Arizona a “green” speech code rating, indicating that its written policies do not restrict speech.

The faculty is ideologically imbalanced. When asked to place their professors on a political spectrum—where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative”—students give an average rating of 2.9. In the 2023–24 election cycle, about 95 percent of faculty campaign contributions went to liberal or Democratic causes. Still, about 1 percent of faculty belong to Heterodox Academy, a relatively high number, by our metrics, signaling at least some institutional support for free inquiry.

Students at the University of Arizona generally feel free to share their opinions. The campus is relatively ideologically diverse and tolerant, compared with many peer institutions. While there are roughly three liberal students for every conservative, this imbalance is narrower than at most universities. Arizona ranks in the top 20 percent on our student free speech index.

The curriculum is in need of reform. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives Arizona 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. While students must complete DEI-focused courses to graduate, they are not required to take more academically substantive subjects such as U.S. history and government.

Nevertheless, ACTA highlights two notable academic strengths: the Center for American Culture and Ideas, which sponsors courses, conferences, and cultural programs that emphasize the importance of the Western tradition in American history; and the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, which advances understanding of freedom and responsibility through research and community engagement.

Arizona is a mixed bag economically for graduates. It takes about 2.3 years, on average, to recoup the cost of a degree, right in line with our overall average. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment are very close to expectations, based on SAT scores and Pell Grant data. However, the university underperforms on completion metrics. Its six-year graduation rate is just 68 percent, seven points lower than projected by the same data.