2025 College Rankings

The University of Pennsylvania played a leading role in the anti-Semitic campus turmoil of the 2023–24 academic year, which, for this Ivy League school, culminated in the resignation of its president, Liz Magill. The anti-Semitism on display in that period was extreme, and other issues had been piling up for years, making Penn an institution in need of deep reform.

Penn had been nurturing a cadre of anti-Semitic extremists well before their opinions exploded into public view. Among faculty, there have long been a significant number of vocal and persistent members who have called for the school to participate in an academic boycott of Israel and committed their departments to that stance. Students, too, have pushed for this goal. In the 2023–24 school year, Penn’s student government approved a referendum demanding that the university participate in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel for the student body to vote on. A majority of participating undergraduate students voted in favor of the referendum. It was then rebuffed by the interim university president. After the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel, protesters took the campus by storm and intimidated Jewish students and faculty members. Magill’s testimony before Congress about the controversy received widespread condemnation and ultimately led to her resignation. The federal government is investigating Penn for its failure to address its problems with radical anti-Semitism on campus.

Penn’s administration indulges activist impulses, as evidenced by its environmental protection pledges, land acknowledgments, and preferred pronoun practices. The school filed an amicus brief in the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court in favor of affirmative action. Penn did, however, recently adopt institutional neutrality, promising that it would not weigh in so frequently on matters of public debate—a welcome development.

Penn’s attitude toward free speech is lackluster. A majority of students tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that they do not have confidence that the administration values free speech. Penn has adopted 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.

Students are generally intolerant of opinions that fall outside their narrow range of views. At Penn, there are 3.8 liberal students for every conservative, and liberal student organizations heavily outnumber conservative ones. Students are far more willing to say that right-wing speakers, rather than left-wing speakers, should be barred from campus. Unsurprisingly, a large number of students support disrupting campus events. According to FIRE, 44 percent say that it is “sometimes” or “always” acceptable to shout down a speaker, and 28 percent say the same about blocking a speech entirely. In the event of controversy, 17 percent say that the use of violence is sometimes permissible. Since 2019, there have been numerous de-platforming attempts at Penn, some of which occurred in tandem with protests concerning events in the Middle East.

Penn earns a “B” from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) 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. This indicates that, at least formally, Penn has maintained a broad set of general education mandates for its graduates. But tellingly, the school requires its students to take DEI-focused classes to graduate and yet requires no course in American history or civics—a symbol of deeper confusion about the elements of a sound liberal education. One bright spot is the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets, which aims “to raise awareness of the importance of markets and their philosophical foundations.”

Penn is a sound investment for students. In fact, it is one of the best in this regard out of all the schools that we studied. On average, it takes students only nine months to pay back the cost of their education, far below our overall average of 2.3 years. Graduates tend to do well in their careers, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients: median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment overperform expectations by over $20,000.