Is UW–Madison in Decline?

Junjie Guo, Kim Ruhl and Ananth Seshadri

Executive Summary:

The third white paper in the series presents a time series of undergraduate and graduate rankings of UW–Madison. While UW–Madison’s ranking among America’s best colleges dropped significantly, from a high of 31 in 2003 to a low of 49 in 2019, it bounced back to 35 in 2024. Unfortunately, the rankings of most graduate programs at UW–Madison declined without experiencing a similar recovery.