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2025 Student Access and Earnings Classification

In 2022, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching partnered to design a Student Access and Earnings Classification that would complement the existing classification structure. The Student Access and Earnings Classification, which has been previously referenced as the Social and Economic Mobility Classification, is intended to center students and drive institutional improvement that can increase access to higher education and improve outcomes.

By design, the Student Access and Earnings Classification will identify the extent to which institutions provide access to students from lower socioeconomic and historically underrepresented backgrounds, and the degree to which those students go on to earn competitive wages in the context of their geographic location. The classification will also help users to understand how an institution’s data compares to similar campuses. This classification-based approach will facilitate richer research and study, help to identify successful strategies, and allow institutions to collaborate with each other to find and advance solutions.

The Student Access and Earnings Classifications will be released in spring 2025 alongside the revised Institutional Classifications. 

Framework for the Student Access and Earnings Classification

The Carnegie Classifications staff has worked with several experts and advisory groups, including a Technical Review Panel and Institutional Roundtable, to develop a framework for classifying institutions based on the types of students they serve and the economic outcomes that students experience. For more context on these conversations, please read the blog post from the chair of the Technical Review Panel.

The Carnegie Student Access and Earnings Classification structure has the following objectives:

  • Create groupings of meaningfully similar institutions, connected to the Institutional Classifications.
  • Within those groupings, assess the extent to which institutions offer broad access to learners and evaluate the outcomes of past students.
  • Present results in a visual way that emphasizes the complex and multidimensional nature of access and outcomes.
  • Be clear and transparent in the data and methodology.

Data and Methodology

Like the Institutional Classifications, the Student Access and Earnings Classifications will be universal, and every degree-granting college and university will receive a classification. As such, the classifications rely on publicly available data sources that contain data on all institutions in the United States. These data provide key information about a campus, but they are sometimes incomplete. While other data providers may have richer datasets for a limited number of institutions, the value of the Carnegie Classifications is in classifying every institution. We also believe the public, universal data that is available can be used to make meaningful analyses that can complement other sources.

To measure access, the classification will evaluate whether institutions are enrolling a student population that is representative of the locations they serve. To do this, we plan to use data describing the enrollment of undergraduate students by underrepresented race and ethnicity as well as Pell grant status, as reported in IPEDS. Those data would be contextualized based on the location that students are from.

To measure economic outcomes, the classification will use undergraduate post-attendance earnings as reported by the College Scorecard, which partners with the Internal Revenue Service to provide earnings data for institutions. Those median earnings will be compared to earnings of peers ages 22-30 who hold a high school diploma or higher. This earnings data would be adjusted and analyzed based on the geographical and racial/ethnic composition of the student body, recognizing that students’ experiences in the labor market may be affected by their location and race/ethnicity. For those adjustments and analyses, we will use data from the U.S. Census.

This framework will separately analyze the concepts of access and earnings outcomes. To display the results, the classification may look like the following, with institutions being compared in the context of peer groups.

The data and classifications, along with a technical guide, will be published in spring 2025.