Today, we unveil the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, ranking the 200 university-based scholars in the United States who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy. The list includes the top 150 finishers from the 2024 rankings, augmented by at-large nominees chosen by the 24-member Selection Committee. So, without further ado, here are the 2025 rankings (scroll through the chart to see all names and scores).
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For more on the committee, selection process, and methodological particulars, you can check out yesterday’s post here.
The top scorers are all familiar names to folks working in education. Topping the rankings this year were Stanford’s Carol Dweck, Harvard’s Howard Gardner, U. Penn’s Angela Duckworth, Harvard’s Raj Chetty, and Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond. Rounding out the top 10 were Columbia’s John McWhorter, UT-Austin’s David Yeager, the University of Southern California’s Shaun Harper and Pedro Noguera, and Stanford’s Jo Boaler.
Stanford placed seven scholars in the top 20; Harvard had three; the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia both had two; and the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Rutgers University each had one. Overall, Harvard led with 28 ranked scholars, Stanford was second with 17, and Columbia and UCLA were tied for third with 10. All told, there were 60 universities with at least one ranked scholar.
Once again, the most popular books from the Edu-Scholars are many of the same ones as previous years’. Emily Oster’s 2014 volume Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know was the top performer on the list (as of Dec. 9, which is when we ran this metric). Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2007) took second place. Other popular titles included: Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016), Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (2011), Gholdy Muhammad’s Unearthing Joy: A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum and Instruction (2023), and John McWhorter’s The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language (2003).
If readers want to argue the construction, reliability, or validity of any or all of these metrics, feel free. This whole endeavor is an imprecise, imperfect exercise. Of course, the same is true of college rankings, NFL quarterback ratings, or international scorecards of human rights. Yet, for all their imperfections, such efforts convey real information and help spark useful discussion. I hope these can do the same. And, finally, it should go without saying that individuals can be influential in problematic or destructive ways. This is an attempt to gauge influence, not the merits of a scholar’s contribution.
I welcome thoughts and questions and am happy to entertain any and all suggestions. So, take a look and have at it.
Tomorrow, we’ll break down the top 10 faculty in each discipline.
