Above: a researcher at IU Indianapolis gives a demonstration during the opening of IU LAB. While research spending has grown on campus, its new research designation resulted from a change in Carnegie Classification standards. (Devan Ridgway, WTIU)
IU proudly reported this month that its Indianapolis campus was designated as a Research 1 institution by Carnegie Classification, meaning it’s one of the most productive research campuses in the country.
But instead of changes that were made on campus, the new designation is actually due to Carnegie’s new classification system. Forty other universities joined IUPUI as R1 when the threshold was lowered recently.
Although IU leaders touted the change as a “prestigious distinction” in the latest trustee meeting, former project director for Carnegie Classifications Victor M. H. Borden said R1 designation is not meant to be a status symbol, although it is commonly taken as one. Contrary to popular belief, he said it doesn’t provide more access to grant funding either.
“We used to have a little swear jar,” Borden said. “Every time you say the word ranking, you put $1 in the jar.”
Carnegie Classifications divides research campuses on two levels, based on their output. R1 universities are the largest.
Carnegie used to look at seven factors for classifying research output, mainly based on size. Now it’s down to two: a $50 million research budget and at least 70 PhD graduates per year.
“It wasn't supposed to be a prestige or designation of quality or anything else than a description,” Borden said. “Large footprint, medium footprint, smaller footprint.”
Some other campuses that were reclassified last year as R1 alongside IUPUI include Michigan Tech, Howard University and University of California San Francisco.
“There are many institutions that are very effective, good research universities that were not recognized at R1 because it was not quite at that level,” Borden said.
Carnegie Classifications explained the update this year in an article in Change Magazine. By trying to earn R1 status, and the prestige that comes with it, they said universities would sometimes risk important parts of their mission, such as undergraduate experience.
But with a lower threshold and clearer guidelines, that rush can be avoided.
Places like IUI already fit the new mold. Under current standards, Borden said it would have been R1 since 2010. Although this reflects longer term trends and output rather than quality, he didn’t object to university leaders taking some pride in the new designation.
“It's not really reflective necessarily of what's been done since President Witten has been in, but it's not like it's dishonest or anything,” Borden said. “It's just survival and making as much as you can out of the good to counter all the things of the bad.”
The fact that IUI was reclassified due to a change in definition isn’t lost on campus leaders, such as Associate Vice President for Research Phaedra Corso.
“This is a level of research that we've been engaged in for a long time, but it's finally being recognized with this change in how Carnegie is coming up with the R1 designation,” she said.
Officially, that designation was granted to IUPUI, since Carnegie looked at a three-year period before the campus split between IU and Purdue University. But of its almost $90 million research budget in 2023, nearly $77 million went to areas that are now part of IU.
Read more: IU Indianapolis begins after IUPUI split
“If you take away all of the great work that our Purdue colleagues contributed to the IUPUI ranking of R1, if you take away their doctoral degrees and the research expenditures, we still would have qualified for the R1 status,” Corso said.
But Borden would be the first to tell you, a university is more than just its research footprint.
IUPUI is young by university standards; it only started granting degrees in the 1970s. Its function as an urban campus was different from Bloomington’s. Rather than research, it emphasized service to the city through education for nontraditional students and social development.
Borden says that’s what attracted him to the campus when he started teaching there in the early '90s, but it’s not the type of mission that helps campuses classify for R1.
“For many of the other programs, funding was more from philanthropic kind of organizations because it was about community development,” he said. “They may move away from that because it's not as rich, it doesn't provide as many indirect costs.”
Corso says that won’t be the case.
“I like to think of IU Indianapolis as a campus that doesn't do research just for research’s sake,” she said. “We do research that has an impact on our communities.”
IUI is Indiana’s fourth R1 campus, joining its Bloomington sister campus, Purdue University, and the University of Notre Dame.
