An influential think tank ranked the University of Florida as the top school in the nation, public or private, a recognition amplified in a Wall Street Journal editorial this week.
The piece, “The University Elite, Reconsidered,” highlighted rankings created by the policy publication City Journal that evaluated 100 leading universities on 68 factors, including tolerance for free speech, ideological pluralism, employment, campus vibrancy.
While traditional blue bloods like Harvard and Berkeley were conspicuously absent from the top ten, the ascendant Gainesville school finished first, besting the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which finished second and third respectively…