Howard Expects to Gain R-1 Status. Other HBCUs Will Follow.

By Sara Weissman

Next year, Howard University is expected to gain Research-1 status, the coveted Carnegie Foundation classification for doctoral universities with very high research activity. HBCU leaders and experts say Howard’s ascendance would be a win for the entire sector as more historically Black institutions strive to make it into the upper echelons of research. Currently 10 other HBCUs have R-2 status, connoting high research activity; a couple are already hot on Howard’s heels, falling just shy of meeting the criteria for next year.

R-1 status has become a badge of honor in the higher ed world, known to attract high-caliber faculty and prestigious research funding opportunities. But for two decades, the designation has eluded historically Black colleges and universities, many of which remain hampered by chronic underfunding and other challenges. Multiple HBCUs have been vying to join the ranks of R-1 universities, galvanizing their faculty to apply for grants and funneling unprecedented resources into research.

Now Howard is poised to become the only HBCU to hold the designation, after meeting recently revised R-1 criteria for the 2025 Carnegie classifications cycle, university leaders say. The designation would be a major boon for the Washington, D.C., institution, which secured R-1 status back in 1987 but lost it in 2005 after updates to the classifications.

There’s been “healthy competition” among HBCU presidents seeking R-1 status, including jokes back and forth over who would make it to the top, but it’s “all in fun,” said Bruce Jones, senior vice president for research at Howard. Jones wants to see other HBCUs follow; he’s currently preparing a presentation about how Howard achieved R-1 status for a handful of HBCUs that have asked for guidance.

“This is about HBCUs, all of us, moving forward,” he said.

More HBCUs are expected to follow, particularly since the American Council on Education joined the Carnegie Foundation in overseeing the classifications process in 2022 and implemented changes to the system. Previously, R-1 status was decided based on a complex formula involving multiple metrics. After soliciting extensive input from higher ed experts and leaders, including at HBCUs, stewards of the Carnegie classifications simplified the criteria to two qualifications: institutions must spend at least $50 million a year on research and development and award at least 70 doctorates.

Howard officials said the university awarded 91 Ph.D.s and spent about $85 million in fiscal year 2023, well beyond the new Carnegie criteria. But even if the old, more complex criteria were still in use, they would have met them, they said.

With the new criteria, Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie classification systems, believes more HBCUs are likely to show up on the R-1 list in the next round of classifications, which are published every three years.

“We were a little worried that we were not recognizing in this very high research activity institution [category], all the institutions that were doing very large amounts of research,” Gunja said. “I think it will now be extremely clear what one needs to do to be able to get into this R-1 bucket.”

Who’s Up Next

Most HBCUs with R-2 status aren’t ready to make the jump to R-1, even under the new criteria. But there are some notable exceptions, said Jaret C. Riddick, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, who studies HBCUs’ pursuit of R-1 status.

His breakdown of data from recent years showed that HBCUs generally fell short of R-1 status in one of three ways: They needed to double their Ph.D. conferrals, double their research spending or were “not close” on either metric.

But two institutions in particular seem to be on the brink of R-1, according to Riddick and other experts.

This past year, North Carolina A&T State University spent $102 million on research and development and conferred 68 doctorates—just two short of the R-1 requirement, said Melissa Hodge-Penn, interim research vice chancellor at North Carolina A&T. But Ph.D. conferrals went up over the summer and are expected to continue growing since the land-grant university added new programs, including a nursing doctorate.

“It’s anticipated that we will indeed, under the next classification review, based on the new guidelines, be at R-1 status,” Hodge-Penn said. “It will put us amongst the top research institutions across the country,” proving “we are competitive against all research institutions, not just HBCUs and [minority-serving institutions].” North Carolina A&T would be the first public HBCU to make the cut.

Morgan State University also fell just shy of meeting R-1 criteria for this year’s classifications.

Morgan State president David K. Wilson said the university conferred an average of 66 Ph.D.s per year over the last three years, only four under the R-1 minimum. Research expenditures fell a mere $6 million short. Wilson projects Morgan will exceed the R-1 research spending specification by at least $20 million and hit, if not surpass, its Ph.D. conferral requirement come next cycle. As he put it, Morgan is on track to “move into the penthouse” of American research.

“I congratulate Howard for potentially being the first to cross the line—but Morgan will be joining them shortly,” Wilson said.

While most of the attention has focused on HBCUs striving for R-1 status, Riddick said it’s also valuable to note the HBCUs poised to jump to R-2 status, which requires 20 Ph.D. conferrals and $5 million in research and development expenditures. Based on his read of 2023 data, four HBCUs could potentially reach R-2 status in the 2025 Carnegie Classifications release.

Hurdles and Hard Work

Howard and other HBCUs have gone to great lengths to achieve R-1 status.

When Jones was hired in 2018, the university didn’t even have an Office of Research.

“We now have a whole body of staff in the area of research development” to write grant proposals, monitor awards, ensure research compliance and help commercialize faculty innovations and inventions, Jones said. “That basically didn’t exist before there was an office.”

Howard also engaged with federal agencies to secure grants and partnered with national research labs so students and faculty would have access to state-of-the-art equipment.

“You have to look at your faculty expertise and see where there’s potential to grow, to go after these grants, to go after these contracts,” Jones said.

Morgan State took a similar systematic approach to pursuing R-1 status. Wilson set a goal in the university’s current 10-year strategic plan to reach the prized classification by 2030. The institution also hired a vice president of research, the second in its history, and went about creating a “digital twin of the Carnegie model,” based on the old criteria, to track the university’s progress toward R-1 status.

“We knew how close or far away we were from crossing the line,” Wilson said, though the new criteria have made that process less complicated.

The HBCUs nearing R-1 status have had significant challenges to overcome.

Howard, in some ways, had a “head start” on its peers, Jones said. It began building research labs and developing graduate programs in the 1800s and early 1900s, but that wasn’t the norm for HBCUs, which were founded as teaching colleges and persistently underfunded. Many still don’t have the funding to update their infrastructure and facilities to achieve the necessary levels of research production.

Gunja said federal agencies have also primarily funded “the same types of institutions year over year, so if you weren’t part of the club that had big research infrastructure and was already regularly getting grants … you might not be on their radar.” Historically, HBCUs “weren’t in that club.”

The old R-1 criteria also disadvantaged some HBCUs because institutions were classified partly based on “comprehensiveness,” or the variety of degrees conferred. Gunja said that hurt state institutions, such as North Carolina A&T, for example, which focuses on specific programs like agriculture at the behest of the state, while its neighbor, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offers a wider variety of Ph.D.s in humanities and social sciences.

“I’m hoping that the new classification structure will really allow institutions to not have to contort their educational missions to try to meet some complicated math formula … but will instead allow those institutions to be able to be the best versions of themselves and really create the sets of degree offerings that are right for their community, for their region, for their students and for the local economy,” Gunja said.

Riddick said the highest research producers in the country also tend to share some key features that are hard for HBCUs to achieve.

His research found that the top-performing R-1 institutions typically spend about $1 billion on research and development—about a third of which comes out of their own institutional funds—and at least 35 percent of the Ph.D.s they confer are in STEM fields. This gives them an advantage, he said, because STEM programs require more lab space and equipment, which contribute to an increase in research and development spending.

By contrast, most HBCUs with R-2 status have strong but less sprawling STEM programs, and HBCUs in general tend to have less endowment money to draw on than their predominantly white counterparts. If state lawmakers and donors want to help more HBCUs reach R-1 status, he said, STEM programs and endowments would be fruitful areas for investment.

“Institutional funding is clearly critical to those schools that are at the top, and this is a place where HBCUs are significantly challenged,” he said. Endowments are “built up over time, and you can’t get that time back.”

Why It Matters

The stakes of achieving R-1 status are high. The designation increases universities’ prestige, makes them more competitive for research grants and can spur philanthropic largess from donors interested in funding research projects.

But Jones said the ultimate beneficiaries are the students, who get to attend a university with more money for scholarships, fellowships and research opportunities. He noted that Howard disproportionately serves students from low-income families.

“Having these investments, it gives us greater capability to tap into the potential of those students who are often left out,” he said.

Wilson added that the push for R-1 status isn’t just about benefiting HBCUs but also about adding a distinct new perspective to the academic research world. He sees Morgan State as uniquely poised to conduct research on issues of importance to minority communities, from how to close education achievement gaps and reduce urban crime to how to ensure artificial intelligence models are free of racial bias.

“We’re not about research for research’s sake,” Wilson said. “We’re about research for impact. We’re about research for competitiveness. We’re about research that is going to bring forward evidence-based results to enable policymakers and philanthropists and others [to address] vexing challenges facing our nation.”