Two North Carolina universities made the top ten in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) 2025 College Free Speech Rankings Report.
The data that was examined took a look at how comfortable students were speaking out about topics about which they were passionate, even when their viewpoint was in the minority, whether in the classroom or anywhere else on campus, and whether they were open to hearing from challenging and sometimes controversial speakers.
NC State came in seventh place, and UNC-Charlotte came in ninth place among the 257 colleges and universities profiled in the survey that FIRE developed and administered by College Pulse. The survey was conducted between Jan. 25 and June 17. Data came from a sample of 58,807 undergraduates enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs.
College Pulse applied a post-stratification adjustment based on demographic distributions from multiple data sources. The “weight” rebalances the sample based on a number of important benchmark attributes, such as race, gender, class year, voter registration status, and financial aid status.
The University of Virginia came in at number 1, followed by Michigan Tech, Florida State University, Eastern Kentucky University, Georgia Tech, Claremont McKenna College, NC State, Oregon State University, UNC-Charlotte, and Mississippi State University, rounded out the top ten.
Other North Carolina universities also made the list.
Eastern Carolina University came in at 13 and UNC-Greensboro at 22.
The bottom five schools were Barnard College, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Columbia University, and for the second year in a row, Harvard University ranked last.
NC State has performed consistently well since FIRE began the survey in 2020, a first-of-its-kind tool to help high school students and their parents identify which colleges promote and protect the free exchange of ideas.
Some key findings include a majority of students (55%) said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is difficult to “have an open and honest conversation about on campus,” a record high for a topic on this question in the five years that FIRE has asked it. At least 75% of students on 17 of the campuses surveyed responded this way to this question.
FIRE said that during the encampment protests, students occupied buildings and attempted to disrupt several commencement ceremonies. Before and after the protests started, administrators suppressed student and faculty speech and, in some cases, even called in police to arrest students. They say many colleges’ Free Speech Rankings scores reflect their responses to these events.
The percentages of students who said shouting down a speaker, blocking other students from entering an event, and using violence to stop a campus speech is at least “rarely” acceptable all increased since last year.
Student concerns about self-censorship have declined. This year, 17% of students said they feel like they cannot express their opinion on a subject at least a couple of times a week because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond. Last year, this percentage was 20%, and in 2022, it was 22%.