The current system, introduced in 2018, includes the following three categories for doctoral universities:[6] In the 2018 classification, institutions were classified as either R1 or R2 if they "conferred at least 20 research/scholarship doctorates in 2016-17 and reported at least $5 million in total research expenditures.
Other changes to the classification system include multiple labels to identify institutions, and recognition for non-doctoral universities.
[7] There are 187 institutions that are classified as "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production" in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as of the 2025 update.
[10] These universities have a very high level of either research activity or per capita in such research activity, using aggregate data to determine both measurements, while having a very low level on the other qualification.
This new category has the same threshold for inclusion as R1 and R2 schools do (At least twenty research doctorates awarded and five million dollars in research expenditures), but unlike R1 and R2 schools, they only award degrees in a single academic area.