2025 College Rankings

The University of Iowa is the state’s flagship educational institution and is renowned worldwide for a writing program that produced some of the leading American authors of the twentieth century.

Relative to its peers, Iowa is not overly committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), or to many other forms of administrative activism. The school does have a DEI bureaucracy, with a little more than one employee per 1,000 students, but none of its faculty job postings requires a DEI statement. Iowa announced in 2025 that it was closing its Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity (DAOD), in response to a directive from the Iowa Board of Regents.

Similarly, the school does not dabble in activist exercises such as land acknowledgments and environmental-protection pledges, though it does favor preferred pronouns. The school has adopted institutional neutrality—a sign, perhaps, that it will not seek to weigh in on public controversies.

The school’s support for free speech is mixed. A substantial portion of students, 44 percent, tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects speech on campus. But the school has implemented a bias-response system, designed to police the airing of 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. Iowa has endorsed the Chicago Principles, which promote the protection of free expression.

Students are somewhat diverse in their outlooks. There are nearly two liberal students for every conservative, and student political organizations are relatively balanced in their makeup. Students are tolerant of views other than their own. Only 6 percent tell FIRE that they are “very” or “fairly” often offended by perspectives shared by classmates. The school ranks sixth in student support of free speech. That said, there have been several attempts to de-platform right-wing campus speakers in recent years, though none proved successful.

The curriculum at Iowa fares decently on our metrics. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school 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. The school does not require students to take history or government courses to graduate but also does not force DEI-focused courses into the mandated curriculum.

Iowa is a fine economic investment. Though it takes students, on average, nearly three years to pay back the cost of the education, graduation and retention rates are close to expectations. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment overperform expectations by over $11,500, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients.