Miami University surpasses R1 status requirements
Miami President Gregory Crawford announced during a Miami Board of Trustees meeting on June 26 Miami spent $57.4 million in 2025 for research and had 82 doctoral graduates this year.
Miami University has reached the threshold requirements for achieving an R1 status, the highest tier for research universities in the United States, according to President Gregory Crawford.
Crawford announced during a Miami Board of Trustees meeting on June 26 Miami spent $57.4 million in 2025 for research and had 82 doctoral graduates this year.
As of 2025, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which awards research activity designations, categorized “Research 1: Very High Spending and Doctorate Production” institutions as those spending more than $50 million in total on research with 70 research doctorates awarded annually.
In 2025, 187 institutions were given a designation of R1 by the Carnegie Foundation. This was about 35% of the 542 institutions given various tiers of research activity designations.
Historically, Miami has been an R2 institution, spending $29 million on research in 2024 and graduating 71 doctoral students in 2025.
David Creamer, treasurer and vice president for finance and business services, told the Oxford Free Press, “We will be submitting to the National Science Foundation our research spending and the number of Ph.D. students that we’re awarding.”
“Those numbers for this year, both the research and the number of Ph.D. students, cause us to reach the threshold,” Creamer said.
However, as of now, Miami is still listed as an R2 institution. The Carnegie Foundation updates its research activity designations every three years and will release the new designations in spring 2028.
“Assuming we sustain this, once they do the evaluation again, we should be elevated into the R1 category,” Creamer said.
Additionally, data provided by Crawford at the June 26 meeting showed Miami’s retention, 4- and 6-year graduation rates, and out-of-state and international student admissions were higher than the median percentages for institutions classified as R1 during the 2025-26 academic year.
“(Reaching R1 status) is something that the president had challenged the deans (to) and the faculty tried to achieve (it),” Creamer said.
According to last year’s Carnegie classifications, both The Ohio State University in Columbus and Ohio University in Athens are regarded as R1 institutions.
Other R1 institutions include Massachusetts’s Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University in California.
Meanwhile, according to Miami’s online Fact Book through its Office of Strategic Analytics and Institutional Research, total instructional and non-instructional staff decreased from fall 2024 to fall 2025 by 127 members. Between fall 2024 and fall 2025, Miami lost 104 instructional staff.
During a board meeting in September 2025, then-Interim Provost Chris Makaroff told trustees the university would save around $2.7 million by increasing workloads for around 20% of faculty. Makaroff also reported an additional decrease in the number of tenured/tenure-track faculty, as well as visiting and part-time faculty.
Since the fall of 2020, Makaroff said the university has closed 76 degree programs, while adding 15-20. The total enrollment for all campuses decreased by around 230 students between the fall 2024 and fall 2025 semesters, according to the Fact Book.
As Miami grasps for the higher research status, the Faculty Alliance at Miami union is continuing to fight for a contract with raised benefits and compensation across the board.
