This paper examines how status moderates the effect of organizational learning—an organizational adaptation mechanism in response to environmental feedback—on R&D investment. Prior organizational learning studies on R&D investment have mostly analyzed the effects of experiential learning from the organization's own performance feedback and vicarious learning from other organizations' experiences on R&D investment. However, existing studies have paid relatively little attention to the mechanisms through which the effects of these two types of organizational learning on R&D investment manifest differently across organizations. This paper posits that organizational status is the primary cause of cross-organizational variation in the effects of experiential learning and vicarious learning on R&D investment, and argues that the effects of the two types of organizational learning on R&D investment will differ according to organizational status. Specifically, this paper predicts that the higher an organization's status, the smaller the influence of experiential learning and vicarious learning on its R&D investment. To test these hypotheses, this study empirically analyzed data on R&D investment of Korean universities from 2007 to 2013, and all hypotheses were supported.