2025 College Rankings

The University of Texas–Austin is a massive state school that occupies over 400 acres near the downtown core of the state’s capital, a blue stronghold in an otherwise red state. UT-Austin’s leadership has recently taken admirable steps that signal a genuine commitment to reform, and it earns second place in our rankings. Still, it has a long way to go after years of drifting along with negative trends in American higher education.

Chief among recent admirable changes is the establishment of the School of Civic Leadership in spring 2023. The new school, part of a broader educational reform effort in Texas, is intended to “provide students with foundational knowledge and critical thinking skills steeped in the Western tradition and American constitutional history.”

In 2024, then–interim dean Justin Dyer was appointed inaugural dean of the School of Civic Leadership. Later that year, the school announced a philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE) minor, and it has recently added a major in Civics. Undergraduates must complete a thorough core curriculum that includes courses in English composition, humanities, U.S. and Texas history, social sciences, math, science, technology, and visual and performing arts.

This curriculum, a recent development at UT-Austin, marks one way in which the school is moving toward a more rigorous education model. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives UT-Austin 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. In addition to the School of Civic Leadership, UT-Austin is home to the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts & Ideas, a Great Books program that ACTA identifies as an area of excellence.

The school is largely unburdened by a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) regime as a result of another state mandate, one abolishing DEI in Texas schools. There are no DEI employees per 1,000 students; there is no Chief Diversity Officer; and no job listings require a diversity statement. Submitting standardized test scores in the admissions process is optional, which seems inconsistent with the institution’s pivot to merit. UT-Austin has adopted a stance of institutional neutrality, which an increasing number of schools have embraced since anti-Israel protests rocked campuses in the 2023–24 school year. UT-Austin has consistently rejected demands that the school participate in the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement against Israel.

UT-Austin falls into the middle of the pack in terms of its support for free speech. Students are more or less certain that the administration values free speech and would protect a speaker in the event of controversy. But FIRE gives the school a “yellow” speech code rating, meaning that its policies are vague enough that they could be abused to suppress free speech.

Graduates of UT-Austin often find economic success early in their careers. The Princeton Review ranks the school’s alumni network in the top 20 for public schools nationwide. Graduates overperform expected earnings ten years after initial enrollment. It takes less than two years to pay back the cost of the education, better than our overall 2.3-year average. UT-Austin’s retention rate is 95 percent, and its six-year graduation rate is 84 percent, both better than expected.