That’s not good
Dartmouth is Dartmouth. It does not need any ranking or classification.
From the article:
To many insiders, R1 is considered “sort of the pinnacle of higher education — a shorthand for institutions to identify themselves,” said Kevin Kinser, an associate professor of educational administration and policy studies at the State University of New York at Albany. He is on the advisory board of the Carnegie initiative. (Albany, by the way, is an R1.)
But Kinser said the label should not be viewed as a ranking or rating, but merely a description based on data. For Dartmouth or any other school to fall out of the R1 category “shouldn’t be considered some deficiency in the institution,” he said.
…
To sort doctoral schools into these categories, the Carnegie analysts examined data from 2013-2014 on research and development spending, research staff and doctoral conferrals.
So it looks like just by being a smaller school, there would be fewer doctor conferrals overall. According to the Dartmouth Spokeswoman’s quote in there, she thinks it’s the size component as well, as research funding has not dropped or diminished, and the faculty has no noticeable deficits against peer school faculty.
Full disclaimer - I had never even heard of the R-distinctions until this article
Also, Dartmouth had only achieved the R1 designation in 2005 and 2010 (they reclassify this every 5 years), so it’s not like a long-standing tradition since its founding. I’m curious if the administration is taking efforts to get back to R1 in 2020 or if they don’t care at all.
There is a reason that they retain the name Dartmouth COLLEGE.
For how long remains to be seen. I am not pleased with this new expansion of the graduate school.
This may not have any impact on the excellent quality of instruction but it will be perceived negatively by prospective students and their families. Just my two cents.
Hmmm… still not entirely following why that would be. If someone happens to see “R1 vs R2” with no real context, sure, that seems like it’s a ranking of quality. But if anyone looks at what it actually means, why would it be a negative that Dartmouth gave out 185 Doctoral degrees, given its total size? Additionally, why would this drastically affect an undergrad’s view of the college? Isn’t this a good thing in some people’s eyes, where Dartmouth is more focused on undergraduate teaching and also doing research, as opposed to researching professors that are required to teach once in a while?
I took a look at the raw data Carnegie publishes and every school I spot-checked on the R1 list has a larger undergrad population and more Doctorals conferred, but some schools (like Clemson) have a tiny percentage of Doctorals vs Size (17260 UG vs 216 degrees) which points to the original quote from the article above saying larger schools get a heavier weight in the designation formula.
I think this could get perceived negatively by prospective Graduate students, but don’t see how undergrads would strike this against Dartmouth.
Dartmouth isn’t Williams or Amherst. Their supposed strength is combining a strong liberal arts undergraduate education with the vast resources of a major research institution.
R1 is something goes in a check box on grant applications to foundations and government grantmaking agencies; at the margins it makes a difference to a school that is not well known enough, where people are always wondering, “do they confer PhDs?” If, say, you are moving an NIH-funded lab and all your staff to a new school, you’d want to look for another R1 institution because you know it has that kind of good housekeeping stamp of approval and NIH is not going to question reupping your grant. For a school like Dartmouth, they already have their own brand and their own reputation, so the R1 designation doesn’t matter a whit. Plus, they are known for their undergraduate studies, so this is irrelevant to their overall mission. In my mind, the omission of Rockefeller University from R1 shows that there is something wrong with Carnegie’s classification because all Rockefeller does is run research labs and confer PhDs–100%–and it is considered one of the premier postgraduate research institutes in the country. (Their President was just appointed as Stanford’s next President). If this is solely a size designation, then Carnegie should make that clear. If they are excluding Rockefeller, it says that something is wrong with their classification system.
And I don’t think having R1 vs R2 says anything about the lack of resources available to undergraduates as you’re stating. Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center being down the road, Tuck Business being on campus, and Thayer School of Engineering all have very large endowments and direct relationships with undergraduates - for Thayer, undergrads take classes at the school from professors that teach graduate students as well, and for DHMC research opportunities for pre-med and bio majors are not uncommon.
I think my point is twofold - 1) We are putting a lot of weight on one ranking list that changes only every 5 years that most people (as judging by the amount of questions I've seen on this board and in an archive search) only gets minimal attention and 2) the source group itself states it is not a record of any RANKING OR RATING or a deficiency.
But Kinser said the label should not be viewed as a ranking or rating, but merely a description based on data. For Dartmouth or any other school to fall out of the R1 category “shouldn’t be considered some deficiency in the institution,” he said.
If an undergrad wants to put weight on their doctoral research opportunities based on R1, without doing further research as to the actual opportunities available to them, they’re not doing themselves any favors.
As I stated above, this is literally the first time I’ve ever heard “R1” be brought up on this board or in my own college research, so I don’t expect my shallow viewpoint to be the end-all of the conversation any more than you would expect your statement that R1 is objectively better than R2 be the correct opinion. So I don’t have much more to contribute to this discussion any more than reiterating what the ranking means (from the source itself) and why Dartmouth dropped (had they given out 30 more Doctoral Degrees, we would have stayed R1 - nothing else has changed since 5 years ago)
^^^^ couldn’t agree more. This mentality = loss of competitiveness. Nowadays not even Harvard can say, “oh well Harvard is Harvard, let’s just rest on our laurels”, let alone Dartmouth. You can see what kind of intense competition Harvard faces from Stanford and how it intensely tries to compete in areas like STEM and tech.
Dartmouth needs to evolve with the times and also stay true to its core identity, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do but necessary if Dartmouth wants to keep competing with the rest of the Ivy+ schools. Dartmouth not a LAC and it shouldn’t try to be one.
The problem is that regaining their R1 by spending the endowment means expanding the graduate program, and that’s not what Dartmouth wants to become. It has one of the premier undergraduate educations in the US; it does not produce a large number of PhDs and the raison d’etre for most departments is for the education of undergraduates, not producing research papers and grant-getting laboratories.
Actually, Dartmouth apparently does want to expand the graduate program. Have you not been following this?
Dartmouth is absolutely trying to strengthen their graduate programs. Graduate programs attract strong faculty, benefit undergrads, attract donations, and help Dartmouth keep up with the Ivy League.
http://thedartmouth.com/2015/10/22/plans-for-an-independent-graduate-school-announced-at-town-hall/
Princeton has a large enough graduate program to be R1, to be top-5 ranked in a number of key graduate areas (e.g. Physics, Mathematics, Economics, Philosophy, Computer Science), yet still be undergraduate-focused. Let’s not sour-grape this adverse development.
^ Your candor is refreshing. It is also worth pointing out that Geisel and Tuck confer certain advantages that Princeton lacks.