The Autonomy of Universities in the USA Falls Far Behind Peer Group

New report on academic freedom worldwide published

Institutional autonomy is essential for safeguarding academic freedom. It is comparatively stable world-wide, with notable exceptions in autocratizing democracies. This year’s Academic Freedom Index (AFI) report, based on a collaborative project between scholars at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg, provides an overview of the global state of academic freedom. It presents data that demonstrate a correlation between universities’ institutional autonomy and individual scholars’ freedom to research and teach. It also analyses the dramatic decline of university autonomy in the United States of America from a comparative perspective.

The State of Academic Freedom 2025

Academic freedom continues to decline worldwide. Over the last decade, it has declined in 50 countries, while only 9 countries have registered improvements. The countries that have experienced a decline include several democracies, such as the United States of America (USA), Greece, Finland, and Argentina. Globally, the most widespread declines are in individual academic freedom and in campus integrity. By contrast, fewer countries are experiencing declines in institutional autonomy. However, there are strong reasons to be concerned about attacks on universities’ institutional autonomy.

Institutional Autonomy in a Global Context and in the West

Between 2015 and 2025, institutional autonomy declined in 43 countries, 21 of which are primarily located in Europe, North America, and Latin America. This trend signals a concerning erosion of university autonomy within liberal democracies, for example in Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the USA, albeit to very different degrees.

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Institutional autonomy plays a central role in protecting academic freedom. Although some scholars and political actors have recently argued that strong institutional autonomy might foster universities that suppress viewpoint diversity, the AFI data indicate a positive correlation between institutional autonomy and the freedom to research and teach. Higher education institutions with greater autonomy tend to provide more robust safeguards for academic freedom at the individual level. Conversely, when institutional autonomy is weakened, both universities and individual scholars become more vulnerable to non-academic pressures.

The Case of the United States of America

This year’s AFI Update presents data on the trajectory of institutional autonomy in the USA and compares the data with the regional averages for Western Europe and North America between 2015 and 2025. The analysis shows that the autonomy of universities in the USA has fallen far behind their peer group.

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The report also contains data comparing the experience in the USA with other formerly democratic countries undergoing autocratization, such as India, Hungary, and Türkiye. In these cases, after previously high levels of academic freedom, declines in institutional autonomy have occurred over longer periods and with varying magnitudes. By contrast, the decline in the USA has been comparatively abrupt, with institutional autonomy falling from 2.4 in 2024 to 1.7 in 2025 (on a scale from 0-4). This significant drop in just one year was driven mostly by coercive federal actions. The decline first started in 2020 due to state-level measures that have continued to put universities under pressure. In 2019, the score for institutional autonomy in the USA was still 3.3, a comparatively high score in both global and regional comparisons.

Despite the alarming erosion of university autonomy in the USA, resistance has emerged through legal and institutional pushback. Actions by judicial bodies, academic actors, and civil society organizations suggest that avenues to mitigate or reverse this harmful development may still remain.

Data

This year’s Academic Freedom Index Update is based on data from V-Dem’s version 16 release, which draws on assessments made by 2,357 country experts from around the world. The data cover the period from 1900 to 2025. All data are publicly available and include a total of more than one million data points at the coder level. The aggregate index is composed of five indicators, namely the freedom to research and teach; the freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; the institutional autonomy of universities; campus integrity; and the freedom of academic and cultural expression.

Open Access und Visualisierungen

The data used for the 2026 AFI Update are available in open access to facilitate further studies. Please also visit the Academic Freedom Index website, where you will find the full report, an interactive visualization of the data, country profiles, and information on the index project. The German Volkswagen Foundation has provided funding for the project for a total of five years starting in 2021.

Additional easy-to-use graphing tools are also available on the V-Dem website for anyone who is interested; they can be consulted by researchers, students, university administrators, research funders, and policy-makers.