UMass Amherst Programs Earn High Recognition in QS World University Rankings, led by Linguistics at No. 2

The linguistics department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst ranks second worldwide in the 2021 QS World University Rankings by Subject.

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This is the fourth year UMass Amherst has held the number two spot, with MIT holding the top spot, and the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford tied for third.

The UMass linguistics department has a strong reputation for excellence in research and graduate education, and its undergraduate program has recently been increasing in size and reputation. It fosters leading programs of research focusing on all levels of linguistic analysis: from sound (phonetics and phonology), to sentences and their meaning (syntax and semantics). The department is also a leader in the interdisciplinary study of human language processing and learning, using psychological experiments and computational modeling. Perhaps most importantly, the department is known for its attention to language diversity, producing abundant research on underrepresented languages and language varieties.

In addition to generating impressive research in the field, “UMass Linguistics has unusually collaborative programs of research and teaching,” says Joe Pater, professor and department chair.

“For example, our graduate program is structured so that students are usually mentored by multiple advisors, rather than just by one,” he explains. This environment gives students the benefit of understanding multiple perspectives, approaches, ideas, and theories simultaneously.

“Compared with MIT, which has been at number one for the past 4 years we have been number two,” says Pater, “our department brings in more external funding. This creates opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in research projects.”

Linguistics faculty have been recognized by the university for excellence. Most recently Professor Lisa Green was awarded distinction in 2020 by the UMass Amherst Board of Trustees when she was named distinguished professor, joining linguistics colleagues Provost John McCarthy and Professor Emeritus Barbara Partee, one of the department’s founding faculty members.

In addition, other UMass programs also earned distinctive rankings in their subject area. Among the top 50 programs worldwide, sport management is 26th; agriculture, 35th; hospitality and tourism management, 37th; accounting, 42nd; and development studies, 42nd.

This year, UMass Amherst is also ranked in the top 100 programs for chemical engineering, computer science and anthropology.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject analyze 51 disciplines at institutions all over the world. They are informed by the opinion of over 100,000 academics and 50,000 global employers, together with the analysis of millions of research papers and citations in the Scopus bibliometric database.