STANFORD ALUMNI
FOR FREE SPEECH AND
CRITICAL THINKING

 

September 14, 2026

 

Stanford Ranks #55 Out of 261 Schools in FIRE’s Newly Released College Free Speech Rankings

 

The writeup for Stanford specifically is available here and which is obviously nice feedback. At the same time, and notwithstanding its high ranking, Stanford received grades ranging from B- to F -- as did most other universities -- for specific categories including openness, disruptive conduct, comfort expressing ideas, self-censorship, administrative support and political tolerance. In a FIRE webinar a day after the rankings were released last week, there were numerous questions from alumni and others about how to improve a given school's ranking and, in fact, the remedial actions were often quite simple, including for one specific school how one or two fairly easy changes would increase that school's ranking by 60 to 80 points.

 

A PDF copy of the full report is available at the FIRE website. Among other things, the top five in the rankings of all schools were Chicago, Claremont-McKenna, Georgia Tech, Michigan Tech and Vanderbilt and the bottom five were NYU, Washington,

Texas State, Northeastern and Rutgers. Some other schools of interest were #6 Dartmouth, #7 Purdue, #24 UC Davis, #50 Duke,

#71 Harvard, #72 Yale, #86 MIT, #98 Brown, #114 Johns Hopkins, #118 UCLA, #124 U Texas-Austin, #132 Caltech,

#176 Princeton, #198 USC, #215 UC Berkeley, #219 Cornell, #232 Notre Dame and #240 San Jose State.

 

See also “Why Some Schools Rose and Others Imploded in FIRE's 2027 College Free Speech Rankings” at Substack.

 

Do Elite Universities Really Need This Much Money?

 

Excerpts (links in the original, bracketed text added):

 

“In 1969, the Ivy League schools collected an average of $89,200 in revenues per student in today’s dollars. By 2019, the real revenues of Ivy League universities had exploded to $264,800 per student -- a nearly threefold increase over 50 years.

 

“You read that correctly -- for every one of their students, Ivy League schools collect more than a quarter million dollars in revenue each year....

 

[Followed by a chart showing revenue-per-student growth at Ivy Leage schools that was as much as five times higher than at other types of schools.]

 

“These are the findings of a new working paper by economists [Princeton Prof. Zachary Bleemer and UC Berkeley Prof. Jesse Rothstein], who have constructed an impressive longitudinal dataset of universities’ revenues and spending over the past several decades....

 

“Such disparities are certainly concerning, but it’s also likely the case that universities which rake in a quarter million dollars per student hit diminishing returns with all that cash. According to the paper’s estimates, Ivy League schools shell out $81,700 per student on administrative expenses alone -- a figure comparable to the US median household income. Yale University famously has almost as many administrators as undergraduates. The bloat extends beyond the Ivy League: other private institutions in the top 50 (as determined by selectivity) spend an average of $41,800 per student on administration [and where Stanford, at $52,099 per the detailed charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage and drawing upon data posted at the federal data base, continues to have the highest administrative cost per student of any U.S. university].

 

[Followed by a chart comparing expenditures at state flagship schools, top 50 private schools, other categories of schools and lvy League schools. Among other things, the chart shows that Ivy League schools spent, on average, $68,800 on instruction, $38,300 on research and $81,700 on administration as compared to state flagship schools that spent $22,000 on instruction, $15,000 on research and $14,800 on administration.]

 

“It’s time to question whether elite private schools’ quarter-million dollars in revenue per student serves a legitimate public policy goal, and whether the various government subsidies that support these revenue streams truly justify their costs. Policy proposals such as capping indirect costs for federal grants and raising endowment taxes, which would somewhat limit these subsidies, should be on the table. Supporting access to higher education for qualified students may be a legitimate function of government. Ensuring elite colleges can spend like there’s no tomorrow is not.”

 

Full op-ed at AEI. See also other detailed charts at our Stanford Concerns webpage comparing Stanford to other leading schools for a number of financial and other factors.

 

Americans Imagine a Faculty Far More Balanced Than Actually Exists

 

Excerpts (links in the original):

 

“Higher education has spent years worrying about its loss of public confidence. Now Washington is asking colleges to tell the public what they plan to do about it....

 

“This question has become more pressing as confidence in higher education has continued to erode. Earlier this year I documented that Americans’ confidence in colleges and universities remained near historic lows, that talk of a recovery was premature, and that the newest erosion was among Democrats. Gallup’s July survey found nearly the same pattern, reinforcing that the decline is real, broad, and is no longer confined to Republicans....

 

[Followed by detailed statistics and charts.]

 

“Now, the ideological composition of college and university faculty is certainly not the only reason Americans lack confidence in these institutions.... But these results also make it difficult to dismiss campus politics as an issue manufactured entirely by outside critics....

 

“A conclusion [a] Yale committee [full text available at our Commentary from Others webpage] reached from these numbers was quite blunt: ‘echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship.’ Yale deserves credit for being realistic about this issue and for recognizing this about itself. But this also sharpens the issue being identified by our data, because the HERI benchmark our respondents saw was both a decade old and an average. At the elite institutions Americans hear about the most, the distance between what the public imagines and what actually exists is substantially wider than the five to one ratio we showed respondents.

 

“That leaves us with a question higher education has mostly avoided asking itself: if Americans looked closely at the ideological composition of faculty, is what they would see something these institutions would be willing to defend?

 

“How confident are the leaders at your local college or university that people with heterodox or non-liberal political views receive fair treatment in admissions, hiring, promotion, teaching, and research? How much intellectual disagreement and debate actually exists inside academic departments? Do opposing viewpoints receive fair treatment when teaching controversial topics?

 

“How willing are scholars to pursue research questions whose answers may be unwelcome to their colleagues? These questions, and others like them, don’t become illegitimate because a presidential administration is asking them, and answering them doesn’t require accepting government management of academic life....

 

“Higher education’s problem isn’t that Americans see it inaccurately. It’s what Americans will see when they take an even closer look. Trust and confidence will not be restored by making the status quo easier to explain, but rather by making the reality easier to defend.”

 

Full op-ed by Rutgers Prof. Nathan Honeycutt at Substack. 

 

See also data at our Stanford Concerns webpage and proposed actions to take in response to these concerns at our Back to Basics at Stanford webpage.

 

Improving Student Discourse at Stanford 

Excerpt (link in the original, footnotes deleted):

 

“In 2022, a diverse group of Stanford faculty published a ‘Statement on Open and Inclusive Discourse at Stanford,’ which began: 

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‘Stanford University, along with many of its peer institutions, faces significant challenges to free and open discourse and therefore to its core academic mission. Students and faculty of all backgrounds -- whether minorities or majorities -- are disserved by a polarized atmosphere that has become increasingly intolerant and antithetical to the open exchange of ideas.’

 

“A year later, the Law School conducted a ‘Policy Lab Practicum on Polarization, Academic Freedom, and Inclusion’ to begin addressing these problems.

 

“The several following years saw at least a temporary increase in polarization around the Israel-Palestine conflict. This was accompanied, however, by the University’s increased commitment to improving discourse in and outside the classroom -- especially through the Provost’s ePluribus Stanford initiative. At the same time as this initiative addresses the challenges of polarization, it tackles the more fundamental problem that many students enter Stanford without the discourse skills necessary for their educations and their future roles as citizens. 

 

“The current Policy Lab aims to contribute to ePluribus Stanford and similar efforts with the goals of improving discourse and civic knowledge among Stanford students, fostering the sense of belonging of students from diverse backgrounds, and ensuring their actual inclusion in discourse inside and outside of the classroom.” ...

 

[Followed by these parts, each of which has a detailed discussion of the issues along with links to numerous sources for followup action: Improving Mutual Understanding Through Constructive Discourse; Improving Education Through Critical Discourse’ Fostering Belonging and Inclusion; Preparation for Citizenship; the Knowledge Necessary to Adopt, Improve, or Scale Programs; and Conclusion and Recommendations.]

 

Full text of the report is available here. For convenience, a PDF copy also has been posted at our Stanford Concerns webpage.

 

Other Articles of Interest

 

An Award for Scholars Who Tell the Truth

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Full op-ed by Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer and Harvard alum Bill Ackman at WSJ: “. . . silence is the problem -- a cultural and an economic one. When the professional cost of publishing an unwelcome finding exceeds the cost of suppressing it, rational scholars suppress it. The result is that social-science literature reflects what researchers are permitted to say rather than what they actually discover. . . . We are under no illusion that a prize can change culture overnight. What it can do is change the career calculus at the margin -- for the graduate student wondering whether a question is too risky, the junior professor deciding whether to submit a finding that will generate angry emails, the senior scholar who has quietly stopped asking the questions he once did.”

 

IRS Proposes Rules to Strip Tax Exemptions from Colleges Using Race in Policies

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Full article at WSJ: “Because the rules allow no wiggle room and the potential penalty is so large, schools are likely to examine their own activities and make changes even before the regulations take effect, said Lloyd Mayer, a tax-law professor at the University of Notre Dame. ‘The chilling effect is very real, and you will see changes in policies and practices because of that,’ he said.”

 

America’s Best Colleges

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Full article and list at Time (Stanford is listed as #1 followed by MIT, Harvey Mudd, Michigan, Caltech, Penn, Columbia, Claremont-McKenna, Harvard, Yale, followed by others).

 

Chinese Government Program at 83 U.S. Colleges Aims to Influence Students

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Full article at College Fix: “Of the 83 American colleges hosting YES, 13 -- including UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Stanford -- are in California.” See also “Stanford Receives Chinese State-Linked Donations” at Stanford Review.

 

Why We Care -- Samples of Current Teaching, Research and Other Activities at Stanford

 

Click on each article for direct access; selections are from Stanford Report and other Stanford websites.

 

Innovative Process Boosts Clean Hydrogen Production

 

Team Develops AI Tool to Predict Workplace Dynamics

 

Squeezing Solid-State Batteries Prevents Short-Circuits

 

Gene Therapy Breakthrough Fits Where CRISPR Can’t

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