• The KillerFrogs

FWST: Why does TCU want to be ‘R1’? What a top-tier research university will mean for Fort Worth

TopFrog

Lifelong Frog

Why does TCU want to be ‘R1’? What a top-tier research university will mean for Fort Worth​

Story by Kate Marijolovic

iu


TCU’s recently announced goal of becoming an “R1” university, a prestigious designation awarded to the nation’s top research institutions, is considered a big deal in the world of higher education.

But what exactly does that mean for TCU — and more broadly, what would it mean for Fort Worth?

The university is embarking on its plan at a time when Texas A&M — already an R1 university — is building a campus in downtown Fort Worth that has been lauded as a “game changer” for the city. UT Arlington, also an R1 institution, is moving into west Fort Worth with a new satellite campus. And just last month, rival SMU in Dallas achieved R1 status, which its provost described as a “game-changer” for recruitment, innovation and a “focus on shaping world changers.”

TCU is signaling that it too intends to be a game-changer. Its strategic plan for growth, unveiled in January, states that achieving R1 status by 2035 will “solidify its position as the premier academic partner for the Fort Worth and broader North Texas community.”

Though becoming an R1 will take time, the university has already started boosting investments in research. TCU’s president and next chancellor, Daniel Pullin, told the Star-Telegram in January that the university isn’t single-mindedly pursuing R1 status. He said the achievement will be a product of a larger, more important goal: improving academic rigor.

What is an R1 university?​

As of this year, only 187 universities in the U.S. have R1 designations, including 16 in Texas.

Among those in North Texas are UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the University of North Texas in Denton, UT Dallas and Baylor University in Waco.

There are enormous variations between R1 institutions, from the number of students they enroll to the fields their subjects research.

The designations, awarded every three years by the American Council on Education and Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, have multiple tiers. R1 means “very high research activity.” TCU is currently an R2 university, meaning “high research activity.”

So, why do universities care so much about achieving R1 status? The designation is widely viewed as a ticket to securing more grant funding, top faculty and the prestige that comes with being in the same category as every Ivy League institution. R1 universities are also believed to drive economic growth in their communities.

To attain R1 status, institutions must award at least 70 research doctorates and spend $50 million on research annually. TCU has been increasingly investing in research for the past few years, but it has a ways to go.

During the 2022-23 academic year, TCU awarded 51 research and scholarship doctoral degrees. The university’s research operating expenses were over $17 million for the 2023-24 academic year, up from over $14 million the previous year.

The university spent over $8.7 million in federal funds alone on research and development in the year ending May 31, 2024, according to TCU’s most recent audit.

Though institutions celebrate R1 status, the designation is more bragging rights rather than a prize. Carnegie classifications don’t rank colleges, and a designation isn’t a requirement for grants or other funding opportunities.

“It’s really just a marker of the amount of the breadth and the types of research that are happening at the institution,” said Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of Carnegie classification systems and senior vice president at ACE.

“It really varies significantly, sort of institution to institution,” he said, “and so it’s a little bit hard for us in some ways to be able to give a one-size-fits-all answer to like, what it means to be an R1 institution, because it just varies so much.”

How SMU became an R1 university​

SMU had been pursuing R1 status for over a decade, said President R. Gerald Turner.

“We have anxiously awaited it, and we’ve had our whistle blows and fireworks ready to go now for about six months,” Turner told the Star-Telegram. “So, it was good to finally hear that they made it official.”

After the Great Recession, SMU realized it could gain R1 status without investing in traditional “wet lab” research like in chemistry and biology, Turner said. Instead, the university began growing its advanced computing program.

SMU got a supercomputer and hired faculty who could use the data it generated for research across a range of subjects, including English and history. It more than doubled the number of research and scholarship doctorates awarded from 2010 to 2023, to a total of 139 research doctorates in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

SMU is now home to a cutting-edge AI data center called NVIDIA DXG SuperPOD. When it was installed in 2021, SMU was one of only two universities in the country to have the technology.

Turner said the number of endowed faculty at SMU has tripled since the university began pursuing R1 status, none of which have been funded by the state. Recruiting was an expensive endeavor that wouldn’t have been possible without the support of alumni and boosters, he said.

“You have to get the faculty that can do this,” Turner said.

Recruitment has become easier since SMU joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in July, which deepened its ties to other research-focused institutions like Duke University and the Georgia Tech.

The R1 label demonstrates to prospective graduate students and faculty that an institution is serious about research, Turner believes. The region needs more top-tier universities, he said, because there aren’t enough highly educated people to work at some of the companies expanding in the Metroplex.

“It’s good for Dallas to have as many high ranked institutions as possible,” Turner said.

Turner is confident TCU can achieve its goal of being designated an R1 institution by 2035.

“They’ll get there,” he said.

‘The mythos’ of R1​

TCU’s path toward R1 status might be a little easier to navigate than in the past.

Ahead of releasing this year’s list, the Carnegie Foundation changed its methodology. Sara Gast, deputy executive director for the Carnegie classifications, said the old methodology required universities to have a specific research footprint, and its complicated formula made it difficult for colleges to determine if they would make the list.

It also only allowed for the top half of research schools to be classified as R1.

“I think it created some, potentially, just challenges on campuses to really try to put every single thing you could toward achieving this designation, because you were in competition with other institutions for these limited slots,” Gast said. “It didn’t really matter if you increased research spending by $50 million, if everybody else around you increased by $51 million.”

Gast said even with the new methodology, the Carnegie designations only manage to capture the scope of research at about half of the country’s universities. Besides, becoming an R1 university after being an R2 doesn’t automatically open new doors.

“We want this to be very clear, what it takes, and we don’t want the mythos around it to sort of outweigh what it’s really measuring, which is a very high amount of research activity,” she said. “It doesn’t say anything more than that.”

Still, Texas A&M’s decision in 2022 to build the downtown Fort Worth campus attracted much attention, particularly because it would be the city’s first R1 institution.

Since then, UT Arlington has announced plans to build a $150 million, 10,000-student satellite campus in western Fort Worth, just over the Parker County line, with a focus on fostering economic development. Tarleton State, which is part of the Texas A&M University system, expanded its campus in southwestern Fort Worth and plans to double enrollment by 2030.

Read the rest of the article at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/w...iversity-will-mean-for-fort-worth/ar-AA1BfBEY

 

hometown frog

Active Member
Amazing how fast admins respond to local competition. It was always an interest of TCUs to get to R1 status. But it took competitor schools putting down bricks in our backyard to raise the level of focus and attention on the pathway to R1. I just hope they let the growth in research happen somewhat naturally and don’t overdrive to get to a number and then flub the actual research and tarnish the brand in the interim.
 

Deep Purple

Full Member
Here’s the catch-22… The key to attaining R1 status is capturing federal research grants. But the Trump administration is denying federal dollars to institutions that operate DEI programs — and TCU remains committed to DEI.

At some point, the university may have to decide which is the higher priority: R1 or DEI. Can’t eat your cake and have it too.
 

Mean Purple

Active Member
seems like following the bad business model trend other universities have done.

focus on producing successful grads who attain better wealth. they tend to donate. that's a better model.
 

TopFrog

Lifelong Frog
Here’s the catch-22… The key to attaining R1 status is capturing federal research grants. But the Trump administration is denying federal dollars to institutions that operate DEI programs — and TCU remains committed to DEI.

At some point, the university may have to decide which is the higher priority: R1 or DEI. Can’t eat your cake and have it too.
Far down the road unless they want grants in the next few years at least to further the effort.

From FWST: TCU’s website boasted DEI as ‘key to the university’s mission.’ Now that page is gone.
TCU, as a private university, in not subject to state laws banning participation in programs supporting diversity, equity and inclusion. It does however, receive a small portion of its funding from federal grants, according to university data.
TCU received roughly $158 million in federal grants between 2014 and 2024. That only made up 2.5% of the university’s revenue over that same time period.
 

Deep Purple

Full Member
Far down the road unless they want grants in the next few years at least to further the effort.

From FWST: TCU’s website boasted DEI as ‘key to the university’s mission.’ Now that page is gone.
Problem is, the small amount of federal funding TCU has received to this point is perfectly adequate to maintaining its current "R2-High Research Activity" status. But to make the leap to R1, more research funding will be needed -- much more. Private sources can provide a little of this, but not nearly enough. And from having worked nearly 30 years in TCU fundraising, I can attest that private donors generally don't like to fund research, especially pure research. They like to see their money producing active results.

This is where federal research dollars become critical. They fill a gap no other source can fill. And no university achieves R1 status without them.
 

TopFrog

Lifelong Frog
Problem is, the small amount of federal funding TCU has received to this point is perfectly adequate to maintaining its current "R2-High Research Activity" status. But to make the leap to R1, more research funding will be needed -- much more. Private sources can provide a little of this, but not nearly enough. And from having worked nearly 30 years in TCU fundraising, I can attest that private donors generally don't like to fund research, especially pure research. They like to see their money producing active results.

This is where federal research dollars become critical. They fill a gap no other source can fill. And no university achieves R1 status without them.
Once the school determines what kind of research institute it wants to be can it not then pursue those entities willing to fund and help further that research?
 

Deep Purple

Full Member
Once the school determines what kind of research institute it wants to be can it not then pursue those entities willing to fund and help further that research?
As I noted, private donors generally don't like to fund research, especially pure research, which is usually one hallmark of an R1 institution. Pure research has no guarantees that it will lead to anything of value or near-term application. That's why most private donors shy away from it. They want to see their philanthropy doing good things right now or in the near future.

There are a handful of private foundations that fund pure research, but they are extremely limited, the dollars are finite, and many institutions with better-known research reputations are in line ahead of TCU. So private sources are a long shot that will never produce enough money for TCU to achieve R1 status.

And this is equally true of the better known research institutions. That's why they so hotly pursue federal grants. The feds don't mind funding pure research, and only they can produce the research dollars commensurate with attaining or maintaining R1. There is no private source in the country or worldwide that can provide that kind of funding.
 
Top