2025 College Rankings

The University of Massachusetts–Amherst is the flagship institution of the state’s university system—and it is badly in need of reform. The school exhibits some of the worst trends in modern higher education.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plays an outsize role at UMass Amherst. The university maintains a sizable DEI bureaucracy, with nearly three employees per 1,000 undergraduates. Over 73 percent of faculty job postings require a DEI statement. Last year, the school received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award, a dubious distinction that reflects misplaced priorities more than genuine achievement.

The administration at UMass–Amherst leans heavily activist. Land acknowledgments, preferred pronouns in bios, and environmental pledges are all standard practice—indicating an endemic willingness to politicize the university. Still, the university’s recent adoption of institutional neutrality may signal a modest effort to rein in some of these excesses.

UMass–Amherst has a mixed record on free speech. Just 32 percent of students say that it is “extremely” or “very” clear that the administration protects speech rights. The university operates a bias-response system designed to monitor and report speech that some may find offensive. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) gives the school a “yellow” speech code rating, indicating that its policies are vulnerable to abuse and could be used to suppress expression.

Political beliefs among faculty at UMass–Amherst are skewed. Students rate their professors at 2.6 on a seven-point ideological scale, where 1 is “very liberal” and 7 is “very conservative.” In the 2023–24 election cycle, 98 percent of faculty campaign contributions went to liberal or Democratic causes. Few professors are affiliated with organizations that promote free inquiry on campus.

The student body lacks ideological diversity. For every conservative student, there are more than four liberals. Tolerance for opposing views is limited: 36 percent of students told FIRE that it is “sometimes” or “always” acceptable to shout down a controversial speaker, and 29 percent said the same about blocking access to such a speaker. More than half—56 percent—say that they self-censor at least once a month.

The curriculum at UMass–Amherst leaves much to be desired. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gives the school a D in its What Will They Learn? ratings, which assign letter grades based on how many of seven core subjects are required in the core curriculum or general education program. The school requires its students to take DEI-focused courses to graduate but fails to impose that same requirement for history or government courses.

The school does not serve its graduates well economically. It takes, on average, 2.6 years to pay back the cost of the education, slightly longer than our 2.3-year average. Graduates do not tend to rise quickly to the top of their fields. Median annual earnings ten years after initial enrollment underperform expectations by over $6,700, based on data from SAT scores and Pell Grant recipients.