UMass Amherst Linguistics Ranked Second Worldwide

Source: UMass News and Media

The UMass linguistics department ranks second worldwide in the 2021 QS World University Rankings by Subject. This is the fourth year the department 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. It fosters 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. The department is known for its attention to language diversity, producing abundant research on underrepresented languages and language varieties. 

“UMass linguistics has unusually collaborative programs of research and teaching,” says Joe Pater, professor and department chair. 

Linguistics faculty have been recognized by the university for excellence. Most recently Professor Lisa Green was named distinguished professor in 2020, 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 areas. Among the top 50 programs worldwide, sport management is 26th; agriculture, 35th; hospitality and tourism management, 37th; accounting, 42nd; and development studies, 42nd.

The QS World University Rankings by Subject analyze 51 disciplines at institutions around 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.