Academic freedom

How this is measured

Five components averaged: freedom to research and teach, freedom of academic exchange and publication, institutional autonomy, campus integrity, and freedom of academic and cultural expression. Produced with the Academic Freedom Index project, and one of the few measures that regularly falls in countries whose other scores are steady. Because it is coded by country experts and then put through a measurement model, every value is an estimate with a credible interval around it. V-Dem publishes those intervals; this site shows only the point estimate, so how firm any single number is cannot be read off the screen. The intervals are wider where fewer experts coded a country and in the earlier centuries, which is exactly where the long series is most tempting to read closely.

163 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1900.

Data by year

Source and licence

Other personal statistics