2025 College Rankings

The University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson with the idea that it would be a model for higher education in the United States. In the more than two centuries since, the school has played a major role in the development of American education. Though the maladies that afflict elite universities are present on UVA’s campus, most are present in milder forms than we find at peer institutions.

UVA’s administration generally works to protect free expression. More than one-third of students say that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects speech on campus—a large proportion, especially at a major public school. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) gives the school a “green” speech code rating, meaning that its policies do not restrict speech. FIRE ranks UVA first overall in its speech code rankings. The school has endorsed the Chicago Principles, which seek to protect free expression on campus.

The administration is free of much of the activism that mars so many other prestigious schools. UVA has adopted institutional neutrality, and it shows in how the school largely stays out of contentious public issues. For example, the school declined to weigh in on the affirmative action battle in the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court, even as many other schools attempted to influence the case. The influence of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointees on the university’s board clearly helped motivate good behavior by the administration.

The vast majority of professors are politically left-leaning: when asked to place them on an ideological continuum, where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative,” students put their professors at 2.8, on average. That said, over 4 percent of faculty members belong to Heterodox Academy, an organization that encourages free inquiry on campus.

At the same time, UVA has struggled to confront a pervasive strain of anti-Semitism on campus. There is an active Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter, and a surprisingly high number of professors have called for an academic boycott of Israel in the past few years—a fixation that distracts from the college’s educational mission. The administration has historically struggled with handling anti-Semitic demonstrations, and during the wave of protests that swept college campuses in spring 2024, administrators took several days to respond. But with strong inducements from Virginia’s governor and attorney general, UVA did clear an encampment set up in violation of university policy.

The school’s curriculum fares very poorly on our metrics. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives UVA 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. The school, despite its founding role in American higher education, does not require that its students complete U.S. history classes to graduate. At the same time, it mandates courses focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). ACTA identifies one area of excellence: the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy, which hosts lectures and seminars focused on the study of the American Founding. The founder and director has recently retired, however, and the program’s future is unclear.

UVA serves its graduates well economically. The Princeton Review ranks its alumni network among the top 20 nationwide for public schools. On average, it takes 1.8 years to pay back the cost of the education, slightly below our benchmark of 2.3 years. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment, however, fall about $1,000 short of predictions, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients.