The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank known for stirring the political pot with the publication of its “Project 2025,” has now set its sights on the hallowed halls of higher learning with the release of a new college guide for conservatives looking to find schools that align closely with their values.

The “Choose College With Confidence” guide ranks nearly 300 colleges and universities and seeks to provide families with the means to choose a college. According to Inside Higher Ed, the guide emphasizes schools that are “prioritizing freedom, opportunity and civil society.”

Officials from the Heritage Foundation say the guide was created to provide options for those who may be turned off by the lack of diverse voices on many campuses, and by how students with conservative views are treated.

“[W]hat’s unique about ours is that we do take into account more than just” return on investment, the director of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, Lindsey Burke, said, adding that college guides are a “pretty crowded space.”

“Is this a university, an institution, that is welcoming to all viewpoints, including conservatives, who have been incredibly marginalized in academia for dozens upon dozens of years?” Ms. Burke, who is also a board member at George Mason University in northern Virginia, said.

Academia has been criticized in recent years for being too favorable to progressive liberal values and not accepting of those with different values or, at the very least, those with moderate positions.

A 2020 study from the American Enterprise Institute found that more than 80 percent of University of Chicago students who identified as conservative said they didn’t express their views in public, compared to 40 percent of liberal students. 

The study also found that conservative professors are an “endangered minority” at many schools. Those who are gainfully employed eschew sharing their opinions out of fear of being ostracized by their peers and colleagues.

The guide issues a color-coded ranking system for 280 institutions. Those labeled with a green light align with conservative values and inclusion, while those given red lights exhibit “pervasive hostility toward diverse viewpoints and lack robust core curricular requirements.”

Schools that were suggested to be avoided due to a lack of acceptance of conservative voices on campus include New York City’s Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and Harvard University.

Institutions given the green light for acceptance of conservative voices include Auburn University in Alabama, Pepperdine University of Malibu, California, and Wheaton College in Illinois.

Researchers at the Heritage Foundation also consider the usual metrics for college rankings, including graduation rates for four-year students and post-graduation incomes. They also weigh in such factors as the prevalence of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators, the ratio of conservative clubs versus liberal groups, whether institutions have bias reporting systems, and whether they require diversity statements for new hires.

The “Choose College with Confidence” guide also doles out red lights to schools that have departments of ethnic or gender studies. A senior fellow at Heritage, Jonathan Butcher, says that such departments perpetuate “identity politics.”

“We believe that ethnic studies is based on a Marxist view of the world as being determined by power struggles,” Mr. Butcher said.