Historically Black US universities chase top research ranking

One year ago this month, Howard University in Washington DC landed the coveted title of an R1 research university — the highest US research designation conferred by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Howard is the only historically Black college or university (HBCU) in the United States to have ever received the title.

The achievement — attained when a university spends at least US$50 million on research and awards at least 70 research doctoral degrees each year — is making Howard attractive to funders, faculty members and students, says its interim president, Wayne Frederick. Several other HBCUs are also on track to cross the R1 threshold soon.

Achieving R1 classification can give HBCUs a huge boost. Historically, such colleges and universities have not been given access to federal, state and other funding, which has been given more freely to predominantly white institutions. “R1 represents when opportunities start to flow towards the university, almost like a gravity well,” says James Martin, chancellor of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCATSU), an HBCU in Greensboro. It and several other HBCUs have been pursuing the designation actively over the past few years. “If we’re going to get involved in research, why should we not want to be on the top floor of the research community?” asks Willie May, vice-president for research and economic development at Morgan State University, an HBCU in Baltimore, Maryland.

The route to R1

Currently, 187 institutions hold the R1 title, which indicates ‘very high’ research spending and a high doctorate conferral rate. The metrics for achieving R1 status have changed over the years; Howard, for instance, held the ranking between 1987 and 2005, after which changes in the classification system meant that it lost the title until last year.

The American Council on Education in Washington DC and the Carnegie Foundation in Stanford, California, which release the Carnegie classifications of research activity every three years, updated the criteria for research designations last year. For the R2 category, or ‘high’ research activity, universities must spend at least $5 million on research and award 20 research doctoral degrees annually. For the ‘research colleges and universities’ category — the tier below R2 — they must spend at least $2.5 million. These changes have broadened the types of institution that can ascend into the rankings, and there is no longer a cap on the number of R1 institutions.

Now that Howard is classified as an R1 institution again, it plans to reap the benefits, says Kim Lewis, its vice-president of research. Seeing itself as even more competitive on the national stage than before, the institution is applying for more multi-year contracts and awards from the government and other funders. “The R1 designation is extremely important to represent us on a national platform,” Lewis says.

HCBUs getting close

There are around 100 HBCUs in the United States, most of which were set up after the end of the US Civil War in 1865 to provide education to people who had been freed from enslavement but were banned from attending universities that accepted only white students. HBCUs now produce a large percentage of the nation’s Black graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, despite receiving relatively few resources from the federal government. “You’re talking about a group of schools that executes one penny on the dollar of the [research and development] expenditure in the United States, and yet on that penny you’re getting all of these outsized results,” says Jaret Riddick, a defence-technology consultant based in Washington DC, who has studied the role of HBCUs in the US research enterprise.

The financial shackling of historically Black universities in the United States

For instance, more Black engineers with PhD degrees graduate from the NCATSU than any other university in the nation. The NCATSU also has one of the highest levels of public research expenditure in North Carolina, despite having never received the same proportion of resources as the predominantly white institutions ranked above it. Following a concerted drive in the past few years, the university is now on track to reach R1 status when the next set of Carnegie classifications are released in 2028. With an annual research expenditure of $82 million in 2024, it fell short of the ranking by only three doctoral degrees in last year’s classification round. Martin says that the NCATSU has added several PhD programmes, including ones in agriculture.

Morgan State University is also poised to achieve an R1 classification in the coming years, after more than doubling its annual research spending between 2021 and 2024 to $56 million. May says that he and other university leaders built an internal dashboard in 2021 to track progress towards the R1 goal; to get there, they introduced incentives to encourage faculty members to apply for and manage their grants, and increased support for PhD students to help them finish their programmes.