Research university

A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission.^[3][4][5][6] They are "the key sites of knowledge production", along with "intergenerational knowledge transfer and the certification of new knowledge" through the awarding of doctoral degrees, and continue to be "the very center of scientific productivity".^[7] They can be public or private, and often have well-known brand names.^[8]

Wilhelm von Humboldt, responsible for the Humboldtian model of higher education

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (Gilman Hall pictured), founded in 1876, is considered the first research university in the United States^[1] and as of fiscal year 2020 had been the national leader in annual research and development spending for over four decades.^[2]

Nuclear research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a research university, in Madison, Wisconsin

Undergraduate courses at many research universities are often academic rather than vocational and may not prepare students for particular careers, but many employers value degrees from research universities because they teach fundamental life skills such as critical thinking.^[9] Globally, research universities are overwhelmingly public institutions, while some countries like the United States and Japan also have well-known private research institutions.^[3]

Institutions of higher education that are not research universities or do not aspire to that designation, such as liberal arts colleges, instead place more emphasis on student instruction or other aspects of tertiary education, whereas research university faculty members, in contrast, are under more pressure to publish or perish.^[10]

History

19th century

The concept of the research university first arose in early 19th-century Prussia in Germany, where Wilhelm von Humboldt championed his vision of Einheit von Lehre und Forschung (the unity of teaching and research), as a means of producing an education that focused on the main areas of knowledge, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, rather than on the previous goals of the university education, which was to develop an understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness.^[11][12]

Roger L. Geiger, "the leading historian of the American research university,"^[13] has argued that "the model for the American research university was established by five of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution (Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Columbia); five state universities (Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and California); and five private institutions conceived from their inception as research universities (MIT, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Chicago)."^[14][15] The American research university first emerged in the late 19th century, when these fifteen institutions began to graft graduate programs derived from the German model onto undergraduate programs derived from the British model.^[14] At Johns Hopkins, president Daniel Coit Gilman led the development of the American research university^[1] by setting high standards for recruiting faculty and admitting students, and insisting that faculty members had to commit to both teaching and research.^[16]

20th century

Research universities were essential to the establishment of American hegemony by the end of the 20th century.^[17] Most importantly, Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, and Princeton (along with Birmingham and Cambridge in the UK) directly participated in the creation of the first nuclear weapons (the Manhattan Project).^[18][19][20] Besides that, Columbia and Harvard were instrumental in the early development of the American film industry (Hollywood),^[21] MIT and Stanford were leaders in building the American military–industrial complex^[22] and developing artificial intelligence,^[23] and Berkeley and Stanford played a central role in the development of Silicon Valley.^[24] The "most prestigious group of research universities" in the United States is the Association of American Universities.^[25]

Since the 1960s, American research universities, especially the leading American public research university system, the University of California,^[4][26][27] have served as models for research universities around the world.^[28][29] Having one or more universities based on the American model (including the use of English as a lingua franca) is a badge of "social progress and modernity" for the contemporary nation-state.^[30]

21st century

The Americans' continued dominance into the early 21st century has forced their European counterparts to confront the urgent need for reform to avoid "declining into an advanced form of feeder colleges for the best American universities."^[31] During that same timeframe, several wealthy petrostates in the Persian Gulf region subsidized the creation of local branches of American universities.^[32] When that approach proved insufficient to establish indigenous research and startup ecosystems (to support the planned long-term diversification of their economies away from petroleum), they started to build their own research universities from the ground up by recruiting Western-trained faculty and staff.^[32]

Characteristics

John Taylor, Professor of Higher Education Management at the University of Liverpool, defines the key characteristics of successful research universities as:^[6]

• "Presence of pure and applied research"
• "Delivery of research-led teaching"
• "Breadth of academic disciplines"
• "High proportion of postgraduate research programmes"
• "High levels of external income"
• "An international perspective"

Philip Altbach defines a different, although similar, set of key characteristics for what research universities need to become successful:^[33]

• At the top of the academic hierarchy in a differentiated higher education system and receiving appropriate support
• Overwhelmingly public institutions
• Little competition from non-university research institutions, unless these have strong connections to the universities
• More funding than other universities to attract the best staff and students and support research infrastructure
• Adequate and sustained budgets
• Potential for income generation from student fees and intellectual property
• Suitable facilities
• Autonomy
• Academic freedom

A 2012 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report defined research universities, in the American context, as having values of intellectual freedom, initiative and creativity, excellence, and openness, with such additional characteristics as:^[34]

• Being large and comprehensive – Clark Kerr's "multiversity"
• Emphasizing the undergraduate residential experience (flagged specifically as distinguishing American research universities from those in continental Europe)
• Integrating graduate education with research
• Having faculty engaged in research and scholarship
• Conducting research at high levels
• Having enlightened and bold leadership

Global university rankings use metrics that primarily measure research to rank universities.^[35][36][37] Some also have criteria for inclusion based on the concept of a research university such as teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and conducting work in multiple faculties (QS World University Rankings),^[38] or teaching undergraduates, having a research output of more than 1000 research papers over 5 years, and no more than 80% of activity in a single subject area (Times Higher Education World University Rankings).^[39]

The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States designates institutions that spend on average at least $2.5 million on research and development annually as 'research universities and colleges', with further designations of 'research 2: high spending and doctorate production' and 'research 1: very high spending and doctorate production' for institutions spending over $5 million and awarding 20 or more doctorates per year and institutions spending over $50 million and awarding 70 or more doctorates per year respectively.^[40] As of 2025,^[update] there were 187 R1 universities, 139 R2 universities and 216 other research universities in the US out of 3941 total institutions classified.^[41]

Worldwide distribution

The QS World University Ranking for 2021 included 1002 research universities. The region with the highest number was Europe, with 39.8%, followed by Asia/Pacific with 26.7%, the US and Canada with 15.6%, Latin America with 10.8%, and the Middle East and Africa with 7%. All regions except the Middle East and Africa were represented in the top 100. The largest number of new entrants to the rankings were from East Asia and Eastern Europe, followed by Southern Europe.^[42] By individual country, the US had the most institutions with 151, followed by the UK with 84, China with 51 and Germany with 45. The top 200 showed a similar pattern with the US having 45 universities, the UK 26 and Germany 12.^[43] By comparison, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (2015) identified 115 US universities as "Doctoral Universities: Highest Research Activity" and a further 107 as "Doctoral Universities: Higher Research Activity", while Altbach estimated that there were around 220 research universities in the US in 2013.^[3][44]

The Academic Ranking of World Universities for 2020 showed a similar distribution, with 185 of their 500 ranked institutions coming from Europe, 161 from the Americas, 149 from Asia/Oceania and five from Africa. All regions except Africa were represented in the top 100, although the Americas were represented solely by universities from the United States and Canada.^[45] In 2024, the US had the most universities in the top 500 from a single country, 114, followed by China with 103, the UK with 35 and Germany with 35.^[46] The top 200 shows the similar pattern: the US with 59 followed by China with 37 and the UK with 20.^[47]

The 2024 Times Higher Education only gave a breakdown by country and only for its top 200; this again had the US at the top with 56, followed by the UK with 25, Germany with 21 and China with 13. The top 200 featured one university from Africa, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, but none from Latin America.^[48] The U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities Ranking 2021 gave numbers by country for the 1500 universities ranked from 86 countries: the US was again top, with 255, followed by China with 176 and the UK with 87.^[49] The 2024 CWTS Leiden Ranking included 1,506 universities in the rankings from 65 countries: China topped the list, with 313, followed by the US with 206 and the UK with 63.^[50]

See also

• History of European research universities
• List of research universities in South Korea
• List of research universities in the United States