2025 College Rankings

Wake Forest University has long had a progressive reputation among Southern schools. Indeed, Wake Forest has a serious Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) problem. It maintains a large DEI bureaucracy, with more than five employees per 1,000 undergraduates and a Chief Diversity Officer overseeing the operation. Over 44 percent of faculty job postings require a diversity statement. That said, Wake Forest is relatively free of other forms of administrative activism.

The school’s commitment to free speech is mixed. Only 31 percent of students tell the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects free expression. Wake Forest employs a bias-response system, aimed at policing speech that some may find offensive. FIRE gives the school a “yellow” speech code rating, indicating that its policies could easily be abused to suppress speech.

Faculty views at Wake Forest tend to lean in one direction. Students, when asked to rate their professors on an ideological scale—where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative”—place them at 2.9. Yet more than 2 percent of faculty belong to Heterodox Academy—a high figure, by our standards, for an organization that promotes free inquiry on campus. This is a welcome sign. Students report high levels of satisfaction with their instructors: The Princeton Review ranks Wake Forest’s faculty among the top 25 nationwide.

Students are relatively diverse in their views. For every conservative student, there are 1.2 liberals, making Wake Forest one of the more ideologically balanced schools that we studied. However, liberal student political organizations still significantly outnumber conservative ones. We rank the school near the top quarter in comfort with which students express themselves among peers, with professors, and in the classroom. That comfort extends to written assignments and social media, as well. Still, 43 percent of students tell FIRE that they self-censor at least once a month. When it comes to censoring others, Wake Forest students generally reject such behavior: 73 percent say that it is “rarely” or “never” acceptable to shout down a campus speaker.

The curriculum at Wake Forest leaves much to be desired. 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. Students are required to take DEI-focused courses to graduate but not courses in history or government.

Wake Forest could serve its graduates more effectively in economic terms. Median annual earnings ten years after enrollment slightly underperform expectations, based on SAT scores and Pell Grant data. The same is true of the school’s retention rate: the six-year graduation rate breaks even. On average, it takes 2.3 years to pay back the cost of the education, in line with our overall benchmark.