I sat down with political scientist Kevin Wallsten to discuss his project building a new college ranking system from scratch. The standard metrics of acceptance rate, endowment size, and name recognition fail to address rising concerns about ideological bias and campus culture. With activism replacing the pursuit of truth throughout higher education, here’s what parents should know before sending their kids off to college.
We get into:
Why University of Florida ranks #1 and Harvard lands at #37
What the 68 variables in this new ranking system actually measure
Why US News & World Report rankings almost never change, even as elite campuses melt down
How faculty became activists, and why even tenured professors self-censor
What DEI bureaucracies did to schools like the University of Michigan
The three competing purposes of the university: personal development, job training, and politics
Why universities are alienating the students they need most
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City Journal College Rankings: https://collegerankings.city-journal.org/rankings
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/college-rankings/PDFs/CollegeRankings.pdf
Outline:
[0:00] Universities have lost public trust
[6:59 7:12] What happened on campus in 2015?
[16:38] How universities became ideological
[24:33] What is the purpose of education?
[37:00] Should we think of college as career training?
[45:38] Campus politics is a status game
[53:51] The self-censorship tipping point
[1:07:40] Why don’t academics like debate?
[1:19:09] How academics view American society
[1:26:43] Has a diploma become a meaningless credential?
[1:35:29] How colleges stack up in 2026
[1:57:35] University governance is broken
[2:06:48] The tension between public funding and academic freedom
[2:19:23] Higher ed is about to drop off a demographic cliff
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