2025 College Rankings

Yale University is one of the country’s oldest institutions of higher learning and one of the most respected. As with many Ivy League schools, however, the school’s legendary academic excellence has been eroded by weak leadership and indulgence of academia’s worst instincts.

Yale is deeply committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as other activist causes. The school has a sprawling DEI bureaucracy—about 16 employees for every 1,000 students, the highest of any of the schools that we studied. Yale weighed in on the Students for Fair Admissions case at the Supreme Court, filing an amicus brief in favor of affirmative action, a race-based admissions practice that the Court would find unconstitutional. The school’s administration adopted a policy that fell short of institutional neutrality last year, leaving the door open for intervening public controversies in the future. This decision drew criticism from groups pushing for Yale to go further in its commitment to neutrality.

Yale’s move came on the heels of its administration’s inability to handle faculty members committing themselves publicly to anti-Semitic stances. During the wave of protests that rocked college campuses during the 2023–24 school year, many Yale faculty members voiced support for an academic boycott of Israel. Students likewise pushed for Yale to join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The administration rejected these calls, but anti-Semitic protesters set up an encampment in violation of school policy. The federal government has announced that it is investigating Yale for its failure to confront this issue decisively.

The administration’s support for free speech is unimpressive. Students, in general, are not confident that the school would protect a speaker’s right to express his views in a controversy. Yale has adopted a bias-response system, designed to police the airing of opinions that some may consider offensive. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) gives the school a “yellow” speech code rating, meaning that its policies could easily be abused to suppress speech.

Students are only halfheartedly tolerant of views other than their own, which are mostly liberal. For every conservative student at Yale, there are more than four liberals. Students tell FIRE that they are more tolerant of left-wing speakers than of right-wing ones. Attempts at de-platforming speakers are fairly common, and there have been several since 2019. In one notable instance in 2022, law school students disrupted a Federalist Society event over panelists’ conservative views, receiving little more than a warning afterward from the administration.

The curriculum at Yale is in need of reform. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school a C 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. ACTA does, however, identify two areas of excellence: the Directed Studies Program, offered to undergraduates, provides an interdisciplinary education in the classics of Western civilization; and the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program promotes intellectual diversity at Yale through a speaker series, workshops, and seminars and also funds an internship program for undergraduates. A recently announced Center for Civic Thought also appears promising.

Yale is a solid investment in terms of financial outcomes. On average, it takes students only about a year to pay back the cost of their education. Six-year graduation and retention rates are higher than predicted results, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients. The school also produces many more Ph.D.s than would be expected, based on the same data. Yale graduates are often successful in their careers. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment overperform expectations by over $6,000.