(The Center Square) – A new report gives Illinois colleges and universities poor grades for free speech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression gave Illinois an F in the 2027 College Free Speech Rankings. The state also received an F for political tolerance and a D- for administrative support.
The survey included opinions from nearly 63,000 students at 261 institutions across the country.
Illinois’ neighbors also fared poorly, with Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Wisconsin getting Ds and Iowa getting a D-.
FIRE Chief Researcher Sean Stevens said enrollment has increased at large state schools in the South.
“I’m not saying that those schools do amazing, necessarily, in our rankings, but a good chunk of them tend to do better than a lot of the schools in some of the states you just named,” Stevens said.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign officials announced on Wednesday that the school’s total enrollment topped 61,000 for the first time ever in the 2026 fall semester.
FIRE gave UIUC an F, partly due to a bottom 50 ranking for disruptive conduct signaling student acceptance of non-peaceful forms of protest.
Illinois taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year on public colleges and universities while students and their families spend hundreds of millions on tuition.
“I do think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to restore public trust because, rightfully, people care about where their taxpayer dollars are going and how effectively they’re being spent,” Stevens said.
Thirty-three percent of Illinois students said using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases, compared with 30% nationally.
Stevens said 40% of Illinois students said they self-censored on campus at least once or twice a month.
Along with UIUC, Knox College, Illinois State, Southern Illinois-Carbondale, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, DePaul and Loyola were among the schools that received F grades.
Northeastern Illinois and Northwestern received Ds and University of Illinois Chicago received D- grades.
Northern Illinois, Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois were not rated.
Stevens said it’s not all bad for Illinois.
“The top school in our rankings for the third time in seven years is the University of Chicago, who largely are one of the leaders on this issue and one of the better performing schools and campuses,” Stevens said.
U of C’s grade in this year’s report was a B-.
Stevens said FIRE encourages schools to follow U of C’s statement of principles on freedom of speech and academic freedom that was released in 2015.
“It’s leadership effectively sending a message to the campus community that they place a value on freedom of speech and academic freedom as central to the functioning of the university,” Stevens said.
Stevens said adopting the statement doesn’t necessarily mean a university will follow it.
