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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
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Job-market strategies for R2 jobs?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Are there any special job-market strategies for placement at R2 institutions? They're not quite elite R1s, but neither are they teaching institutions. They're somewhere in between.

My guess is that it is probably best to treat them like R1s, and follow much of the advice in the Job Market Boot Camp Series accordingly: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2019/07/tailoring-your-job-market-strategy-to-your-situation.html

Marcus defines them "roughly as research universities without philosophy PhD programs" here: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2015/03/job-market-boot-camp-part-2-building-a-good-cv.html

I don't think I quite defined R2's properly in that earlier post (as they do have PhD programs), but in any case I suspect it's best to treat them like R1s due to their focus on research.

What do readers think? Are there any special "strategies" to position oneself particularly well for them?

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8 responses to “Job-market strategies for R2 jobs?”

  1. Hope to help

    I work at a state R2. We care a lot about teaching, and we care a lot about research. (The order is intentional.) My advice to you if you were applying to my R2: Do not neglect to discuss your teaching strengths, experiences, and qualifications. MIT and Oxford care about teaching, I am sure, but way less than my R2 does.
    FWIW, I think there is great variation among R2s and their philosophy departments in particular. Some R2s and/or their phil. departments want to be the next UofM or Yale; others accept that they are, well, the backup for students who did not get into the UofM or Yale. I think it would be advisable to look at the philosophy department at the R2 you are applying to and see how active the members are in publishing and the general focus of the department website (e.g., does it emphasize philosophy club or faculty research?). If it is clear that the department is more teaching-focused, then put the teaching paragraph of your cover letter before your research paragraph. If it is clear that the department care more about research, then place your research paragraph above your teaching paragraph.

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  2. Rrrrrrrrr

    One should take a look at the Wikipedia entry on R1 and R2 universities – I think many would be surprised by which universities are on the lists. Remember this is a Carnegie Classification. You can read about that as well. I think, as Marcus says, just do the same as what you would do if you were aiming for a job at an R1.

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  3. Slacker

    @Hope to help I’m sure you chose the example pretty randomly, but in fact Oxford cares a huge amount about teaching! This is because a (TT equiv ‘fellow’) hire must be jointly approved by the federal university which largely cares about research and grad teaching, and by the college which cares almost entirely about undergraduate teaching.

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  4. MPA

    I teach at an R1 that is not the state flagship. I’ve found here and elsewhere that the designation ‘R1’ is sometimes more indicative of what admins think matters and what the university aspires to be even if it does not actually support (= $) those aspirations well. It also may have very little to do with how well the philosophy dept is doing (e.g., maybe there are lots of research funds driving that classification that are entirely unrelated) or what they care about.
    My sense is that the best bet for thinking about how the faculty at a less prestigious R1 (like mine) or an R2 would evaluate your application/portfolio is to look at what they’ve been up to since tenure (or how many pubs they had on average for tenure). If they don’t update their website with their recent pubs (or if the majority of the faculty don’t maintain a website listing their pubs) then that is a clue about what they care about. Yes, I realize some very research active faculty couldn’t care less about these things, so YMMV.
    In the case of my R1, faculty are very research active, and you could tell this by looking at faculty profiles and personal websites. Nevertheless, don’t discount teaching. I would not put the “teaching paragraph” first in your letter (I would do this only for some 4 year colleges or for community colleges), but I still would absolutely make clear your teaching strengths and goals.

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  5. R2D2

    I teach at a private and regionally prestigious R2. I agree with Hope to help’s comment above. Just another data point:
    At my R2, we also care a lot about both teaching and research, but we’re satisficers about teaching and maximizers about research. If you don’t teach well (as reflected in, say, thoughtful syllabus design, on-the-ground facility with students in the context of a teaching demo, generally positive teaching evals, etc.), you won’t be taken seriously as a candidate. At the same time, quite a few of us have robust research programs and expect anyone we hire to as well. Most of the faculty at my R2 would hire a sufficiently good teacher with an impressive list of publications and research plans over a stellar teacher with only a few token pubs who will stop publishing after tenure. In short, I would not advise the OP to do exactly what they would do if they were applying for a job at an R1. I’d foreground your teaching credentials/experience, but know that research matters a lot at R2s like mine.

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  6. R2 to R1

    Following Rrrrrrrr’s comment, I think that there is some confusion about what is meant by ‘R2’, both by the OP perhaps and in discussions around these kinds of things. R1 refers to the status of the university, not the department within the university. For instance, in my case, my state university recently moved from R2 status to R1 status. Nothing has changed within the philosophy department thanks to this move (although it might give us a tiny bit more leverage in trying to reduce overall course loads, but not overall seat loads). Our department is B.A. only. We are a small department, fewer than 10 full time faculty. So, the fact that our university is (now) R1 has zero impact on the department. And it wouldn’t change anything if we were doing a job search. And we didn’t take our R2 status into consideration when making past hiring decisions.
    This prompted me to check out which schools are counted as R1s and which are R2s. To my surprise, there are a few philosophy departments at R2 universities that offer graduate degrees. These departments are stronger in and more committed to research than many R1s (an educated guess). And I would bet that even at R2 universities that only have a B.A. available in philosophy, some of those departments are much more concerned with research than some departments at R1 universities.
    So, in terms of applying to jobs, as Hope to help suggests, it is just about checking out each department itself to get a sense of the research activity of the faculty. Obviously, it might be especially helpful to look at the research output of any recent hires or people who were recently tenured there to get a sense of the research expectations of the department and administration.
    This last point is the only one that I think might present any kind of special challenge to someone applying to an R2 or even R1 without a grad program in philosophy. It could be the case that there is a disconnect between the members or the department and the Dean, Provost, etc. I could imagine a situation where faculty members (and so the people making the initial hiring decisions) could care more about teaching than the admins do. Or to put it another way, the admins might care about quantitative data about research more than the hiring department members, who care more about teaching, collegiality, etc. But in applying for a job, the first hurdle is the committee, so I would structure my material in a way that is guided by what I can discern about the faculty based on the advice above.

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  7. research, research, research, and a lot of teaching at an R1

    My two cents:
    1. R1/R2 classifications may have nothing to do with the philosophy department. I am at an R1 university, but our classification as R1 is due to graduate programs primarily in STEM, not in the humanities. Our philosophy department does not have a graduate program.
    2. Even though we are a very teaching-focused department, the path to tenure is heavily based on research. Even though we highlight the importance of teaching (and student clubs etc.) in our job ads, research tends to come first in our appraisal of job candidates. Even though we are an R1, we seem like an R2 and get a lot of teaching-centered applications. Unfortunately, teaching-centered dossiers don’t stand out.
    Looking at recently tenured faculty might be key to determining whether to submit a teaching-focused or research-focused dossier for positions in which it isn’t abundantly clear.

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  8. Anon UK Grad

    I want to second Hope to Help’s comments. I also work at a state R2. When we discuss an applicant’s file, we spend our time talking about two things, mainly. The first is whether the candidate has clearly articulated how their research fits with the specifics of the job ad.
    The second is whether they have discussed teaching experiences that help us understand how they would be successful teaching students like ours. This last part is key. Most of us were trained at elite R1 universities, and so most of our early teaching experience was with the kind of undergraduate who attends such elite universities. But, those are (in general) not the students we teach now. So, we want to see that the candidate has put some real thought into their pedagogy, and discusses how they teach all their students (not just the best and brightest ones). Concrete specifics of in-class techniques, and or course design (not just readings but activities and kinds of assignments) are very helpful in this regard.

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