2025 College Rankings

From leadership to intellectual diversity, the University of Rochester has developed an undistinguished record on many of the key areas we examined.

Its administration is not overrun by activists so much as paralyzed in the face of campus radicalism. When anti-Semitic protesters set up an encampment in violation of university policy in 2024, administrators allowed it to remain for over 20 days. The school acted only as commencement neared, calling in police to dismantle the encampment after fruitless negotiations. To its credit, the administration did issue a statement rejecting demands for the university to join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

The school maintains a sizable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy, with more than three DEI employees for every 1,000 undergraduates, and a Chief Diversity Officer directing the operation. On the positive side, none of the faculty job postings at Rochester requires a diversity statement.

Rochester’s commitment to free speech is dubious. Only 18 percent of students tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration values free speech. 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.

The faculty is imbalanced. Students regard their professors as fairly liberal, placing them at 2.9 on an ideological continuum where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative.” In the 2023–24 election cycle, nearly 95 percent of faculty campaign donations went to liberal or Democratic causes. An insignificant number of faculty members belong to organizations that promote free inquiry on campus.

Students, for their part, are even more ideologically skewed. For every conservative student at Rochester, there are about 27 liberals—making it the third least ideologically diverse school in our study. Tolerance for opposing views is limited, especially when it comes to campus speakers. According to FIRE, 34 percent of students say that it is “sometimes” or “always” acceptable to shout down a controversial speaker. Self-censorship is also widespread: nearly half of students report doing so at least once a month.

The curriculum at Rochester is very weak on our metrics. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school an F 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. Rochester shows little interest in grounding students in U.S. history or government, not requiring coursework in these subjects.

Rochester is a risky investment. Graduates do not tend to succeed early in their careers. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment underperform expectations, set by data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients, by nearly $10,000. It takes, on average, 3.1 years to pay back the cost of the education, longer than our 2.3-year benchmark.