COSSA Releases 2021 Rankings of Federal Support for Social Science Research at U.S. Colleges and Universities

On February 16, COSSA released its 2021 College and University Rankings for Federal Social and Behavioral R&D, which highlight the top university recipients of federal research dollars in the social and behavioral sciences. This year’s rankings feature a dashboard with an interactive map of recipients of social and behavioral science R&D funding so you can see how your university stacks up among more than 500 U.S. institutions. Based on the most recent available federal data, the COSSA rankings use an inclusive selection of fields representing the breadth of the social and behavioral sciences to calculate the total federal R&D funding received by universities in the social and behavioral sciences. More information on how the rankings are produced is available on the COSSA website.

The top 10 recipients for 2021 are:

1. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill* (NC) – $207,442,000 (#1 in 2020)
2. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor* (MI) – $191,060,000 (#2 in 2020)
3. University of Maryland* (MD) – $95,066,000 (#4 in 2020)
4. University of Southern California (CA) – $62,945,000 (#5 in 2020)
5. Arizona State University* (AZ) – $61,642,000 (#7 in 2020)
6. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities* (MN) – $60,886,000 (#3 in 2020)
7. Harvard University* (MA) – $53,884,000 (#12 in 2020)
8. Pennsylvania State University, University Park and Hershey Medical Center* (PA) – $52,060,000 (#8 in 2020)
9. Duke University* (NC) – $48,507,000 (#15 in 2020)
10. University of Wisconsin-Madison* (WI) – $47,374,000 (#13 in 2020)

* Denotes COSSA member