College and university leaders, faculty, funders, and policymakers routinely and rightly cite social and economic mobility as a core goal. Unfortunately, existing data and analyses often fail to account for the distinct missions, unique student populations, and complex operating environments of institutions. These gaps make it difficult for higher education leaders and stakeholders to understand how effectively schools are leveling the playing field and achieving their social and economic mobility goals.
The American Council on Education (ACE) began developing the Social and Economic Mobility Classification for the Carnegie Classifications of Higher Education in late 2022 to create better data on mobility and incentivize colleges and universities to focus on increasing learner outcomes and expanding access to students, especially those who have been underserved.
This blog post will describe how we have structured our time since starting our work, what we have learned about social and economic mobility, and what we have ahead as we target the release of the new classification in early 2025.
Building a New Classification
Soon after announcing that ACE would lead the reimagining of the Carnegie Classifications of Higher Education, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching determined foundational parameters and objectives that the Social and Economic Mobility Classification must operate within and fulfill. These include:
- Universality: the methodology must be able to produce a classification result for every institution in the United States that enrolls degree-seeking students.
- Relevancy to stakeholders: the classification must be relevant to students/families and public decisionmakers as well as researchers. Accordingly, the classification should observe at the institution-level rather than the field/major level.
- Simplicity, transparency, and replicability: the methodology must be clear, intuitive, and simple. The results must be reproducible by any interested party.
- Collaboration for better data: The project must create a classification in the near-term with existing data while working with external data providers to produce enhanced future classifications.
ACE convened a technical review panel in September 2022 to guide the design of the new classification. Given the clean-sheet opportunity, the TRP began its work by exploring the philosophical, historical, and theoretical underpinnings of concepts that could be built into the classification. We covered the concepts of social and economic mobility; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and identifying institutional environments that schools create to enable student access and success.
The TRP reviewed existing projects in the social and economic mobility space. This included high-quality studies of intergenerational economic mobility and return-on-investment/value of colleges and universities along with other projects that blend a variety of measures into a composite score of mobility. We also took stock of existing data and explored future data that could be used in the project.
While doing this work, we quickly started to form ideas of what we could build into the classification to ensure that it offers new insights to the field rather than duplicates existing approaches and results (particularly the ROI and intergenerational mobility studies). Over the course of the past year, these ideas have evolved into exploratory analyses, then working models, and now into an increasingly cohesive analytical approach.
Lessons Learned on Social and Economic Mobility
The work of the TRP so far has yielded several insights:
- Although social and economic mobility are distinct concepts, social mobility is often conflated with economic mobility because of the significant measurement challenges associated with social mobility.
- The social and economic mobility produced by a school for its students is a product of not only the educational environment of that school, but also the fields of degrees offered by the school; the geography of where students originate and where they end up after attendance; and the interaction of the labor market with student characteristics such as race/ethnicity, sex, and age.
- Most mobility projects ignore the role of institutional environments, geography, and student body composition. These are complex and important factors. For example, geography affects the pool of potential students available to a school as well as the subsequent opportunities available to students after they leave the school. Not considering the demographics of the student body means ignoring the presence of systemic injustices in education and economic systems. This ultimately punishes schools that offer access to students who face challenges in the labor market through no fault of their own.
Next Steps
We are continuing to develop the methodology for the Social and Economic Mobility Classification around the insights of the TRP, and we will share more details about the methodological approach later this spring for feedback and engagement. At that time, we will also share the first set of eight papers in a new series of white papers on issues of higher education classification and methodological decisions related to the upcoming versions of the Carnegie Classifications.
Overall, we will continue to share updates about the project as we finalize our methodological approach this fall and publish the new classification in early 2025. The Social and Economic Mobility Classification will complement not only other frameworks for measuring mobility at institutions but will enhance the broader Carnegie Classifications by providing a new, student-centered lens. We look forward to the insights this new classification will bring to light.
This piece originally posted on Forbes on January 27, 2024.
My 16-year-old son has a piece of paper, thumbtacked to his bedroom wall: a list of about 30 colleges and universities, carefully ordered alongside checkmarks and crosshatches. Upon first glance, the list wouldn’t make much sense to anyone, but perhaps another teenager. The way in which he has grouped colleges together is based on three things: campus aesthetics, geographic factors (you better believe “sunny at least 300 days of the year” is on the list of criteria for this Colorado kid), and athletic prowess.
When I asked him to describe the list in more detail – specifically the ordering of the institutions and his rationale behind the imperfect categorization – he told me he is looking at each campus based on the factors that matter most to him. Fair – for a 16-year-old, but not his higher ed policy wonk mom.
I pressed him on how different the list might look if he included factors such as academic programs (does the college even offer the academic major in which he has interest?), the percentage of students who received financial aid against the cost of attendance, or the diversity of the student body. He shrugged his shoulders.
As we continued the conversation about his somewhat imperfect list and categorization, and I sought to make sense of what he had constructed, I could not help but think about the work the American Council of Education (ACE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are doing to reimagine the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, known as the Carnegie Classifications.
In 2022, ACE and the Carnegie Foundation – set out to modernize the Carnegie Classifications, the framework that has been used by researchers, institutions, and policymakers to classify American colleges and universities for nearly five decades. I imagine that while I have a few colleagues who understand the evolution of the Carnegie Classifications over the last fifty years, the majority of Americans (much like my teenage son) would just shrug their shoulders.
And for good reason. Previous versions of the Carnegie Classifications were never really intended for broad public use or consumption. The classifications were a tool developed by a small team of education policy researchers to better understand characteristics of higher education and then used largely among the higher education research community.
As ACE and the Carnegie Foundation started to examine ways in which the Carnegie Classifications could evolve, it became clear that the framework – once developed by higher education researchers, yet largely unchanged since 1973 – had failed to keep pace with the evolving and rapidly diversifying higher education landscape.
“The original classification structure may have made perfectly good sense 50 years ago, but our way of organizing institutions has not evolved as institutions themselves have grown and changed in any number of ways,” said Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classifications.
As Gunja and deputy executive director of the Carnegie Classifications Sara Gast began talking with stakeholders – from higher education presidents and chancellors, to provosts and academic deans, to higher education researchers and non-profit education organizational leaders – they learned that the relatively static version of the Carnegie Classifications were actually being used to inform federal and state policy and undergird college magazine rankings frameworks. Some campuses even use their classification on public marketing banners and collateral.
In addition to updating the classification framework to better reflect the diversity and complexity of the present higher education landscape, the variety of use cases for the classifications that were impacting consumer decisions became another factor driving the need to modernize the system.
“When we started our work, our top priority was to learn from as many people as possible about how they interact with the classifications, both in intended and unintended ways. Those conversations led to a number of discoveries and reinforced to us how important it is to bring everyone into this work,” Gast said. “We want to maximize this opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the purpose of the classification system, where it has fallen short, and how it has driven institutional behavior, and then be much more intentional about how we design the new classifications.”
One of the most significant changes to be made in a modernized version of the Carnegie Classifications released in early 2025, will be the revision of the Basic Classification. This category historically placed all colleges and universities into groups based on the highest degree awarded.
As an example of how limiting it is to organize institutions by only this single characteristic, under the old classification framework, institutions including Utah State University, Florida International University and Pennsylvania State University all have the same Carnegie Classification because the highest degree they award is the research doctorate (think Ph.D.s). But, other than their similarity with the highest degree awarded, these three institutions are incredibly different from one another. They differ in their student body demographic compositions, hundreds of millions of dollars in research funds separate each institution from the other, and the difference in the percentage of credentials awarded across degree categories (e.g., associates, bachelor’s, master’s) is significant.
The revised Basic Classification will be multi-dimensional and better reflect the richness and multifaceted nature of institutions and their learners. While the Carnegie Classifications team is still collecting feedback from higher education leaders and other stakeholders, an expanded list of organizing characteristics could include degree and certificate mix, size of the student body, location type, highest degree awarded, and transfer rates, among other factors.
“One of the limitations we see in the current classification system is its reliance on the highest degree awarded, which misses a bunch of what may be happening at a given institution and is not necessarily what makes two institutions alike. The purpose of this classification system is to organize institutions into groups of similar types or peers, and we think there may be better ways of doing that. That could mean looking at size or at the type of academic programs they offer, or at any number of other characteristics,” Gunja said. “That’s what we are gathering feedback on this spring. Ultimately, instead of a single characteristic, we imagine using more of a Myers-Briggs-like approach.”
The more dynamic classification framework may give researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders who are populating public dashboards, databases, or search tools to leverage information that makes it easier to understand how institutions compare – or contrast – with similarly situated peers.
“The reason we are taking on this work, and the reason ACE wanted to be involved in redesigning the Carnegie Classifications, is because they have an impact on institutional behavior,” said ACE President Ted Mitchell. “We want to modernize the system, lower the energy around the research classification chase, and ultimately point the Carnegie Classifications – and the sector as a whole – toward the students we serve and the outcomes they experience. If the classifications drive behavior, we want it to be behavior that benefits students.”
In addition to revisions to the Basic Classification, the ACE and Carnegie Foundation teams are working on a new Social and Economic Mobility Classification intended to give the public more information about the ways in which institutions are contributing to the long-term success of learners. The Social and Economic Mobility Classification will categorize institutions based on a variety of student characteristics and student outcomes. The new Social and Economic Mobility Classification could be complementary to other initiatives that have sought to increase transparency around the value of higher education such as the Postsecondary Value Commission Task Force led by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU).
“The postsecondary sector is clearly an extraordinarily powerful engine for social and economic opportunity. In the decade ahead, it must become even more so,” said Timothy Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation. “The Carnegie Classifications have an essential role to play. They have a substantial impact on public policy, institutional priorities, scholarship, and the allocation of capital. The changes underway will illuminate institutions’ contributions to social and economic mobility, creating new opportunities for learning and improvement. Ultimately, this work will be good for students, good for institutions of higher education, and good for the nation.”
While a 16-year-old’s version of organizing and categorizing colleges may forever be imperfect, the forthcoming changes to the Carnegie Classifications should ensure a more precise grouping of higher education institutions to better reflect their diverse and unique characteristics.
Alison Griffin is a Senior Vice President with Whiteboard Advisors, a social impact agency that helps entrepreneurs, donors and investors navigate the complex intersection of policy, the media and technology.
This piece originally posted on Education Commission of the States on January 27, 2024.
Since 1973, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education has served as the predominant framework to classify American colleges and universities. It was originally created for researchers as a way of organizing the higher education sector, but since the release over 50 years ago, the classifications have informed many policies, reporting structures and benchmarking tools. These policies, structures and tools will likely be affected by changes to the classifications starting in 2025.
Since these classifications have influence on institutional behavior and policies that govern higher education, the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation have engaged institutional leaders, policymakers, organization leaders, reporters and other key stakeholders who interact with the classifications to consider updates over the past two years. In these conversations, we heard countless examples of how the classifications are baked into state and federal policy.
For example, a policy may use the classifications to define what makes an institution an associate college or doctoral university. These definitions may affect funding formulas, such as funding associate colleges at different levels than baccalaureate colleges. Faculty pay can be impacted by an institution’s Carnegie Classification as can state performance funding. Some states provide additional funds for institutions to pursue a Carnegie research designation. And there are some federal grants that are restricted to R2 or to non-R1 institutions.
Beyond funding, accrediting agencies often use the classifications in determining peer groups or site visits. State and federal agencies may report data by Carnegie Classification grouping, and it can be a useful comparison tool to see how an institution sits within a national context. They also are part of the underlying methodology for the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges lists. In short, the Carnegie Classifications have an influence on institutional behavior and on the policies and systems that govern U.S. higher education – and that is why we want to make sure policymakers are aware of what is coming.
As stated above, most of these use cases will be impacted by changes to the classifications starting in 2025. Our November 2023 announcement described how the classifications are being modernized to more accurately describe and classify the current higher education landscape. That means policymakers might want to examine statutes, higher education policies and regulations for Carnegie names and terms so they understand where these changes will impact their decisions, policies or implementation processes.
Excitingly, we are also looking to do more than just modernize the existing structure. We are creating a new classification system that groups institutions by the social and economic mobility that they provide students. At a broad level, the classification will group similar types of institutions and look at the access they are providing to students as well as the outcomes those students experience. As policymakers consider how they want to make funding and governance decisions, this new system could be a lens that better aligns with their strategic priorities than the legacy classification.
We welcome ideas and suggestions from users of the classifications, particularly policymakers, on how to make them more useful. Please use this feedback form if you would like to participate.
As part of the broader efforts to reimagine the Carnegie Classifications announced in 2022, the Universal and Elective Classifications were also brought together in the same organizational home at the American Council on Education to help further show the breadth and range of the missions and purposes of American higher education. That transition has also prompted the exploration of how we can further modernize the Universal Classifications to better reflect in contemporary terms the broad public purpose, mission, focus and impact of our nation’s colleges and universities. As shared in the Frequently Asked Questions related to the recent announcement of changes to the 2025 Carnegie Classifications, we plan to also expand the number and types of Elective Classifications as well. The Elective classifications, too, must be adaptive, and the forthcoming changes are intended to ensure that the frameworks created to describe postsecondary institutions remain relevant and useful.
Currently, the Elective Classifications comprises two categories: Community Engagement, which was introduced in 2006, and Leadership for Public Purpose, which is now completing its inaugural cycle and will announce its first set of classified institutions in June. As we began to examine our data and participation rates and consider feedback from participating colleges and universities, it became clear that we needed to think more broadly and boldly about the Elective Classifications and revise the policies and practices surrounding application and participation. The result is reimagined Elective classifications centered on people and focused on transformation. That led us to develop four goals for the future of the Elective classifications and its applications:
Balanced rigor
It’s critical that the application process simultaneously maintain rigor while also being a reasonable lift for campuses. In talking with institutions, we realized that parts of the existing Elective classification applications were repetitive and unnecessarily complicated and that we should allow applicants to tell fuller stories. We acknowledge that the process should be more inclusive of community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other institutions with low rates of applying to these Classifications. Lastly, we thought deeply about how to integrate continuous improvement into reclassification processes for institutions that might be applying for a third time.
Of and by the field
We are involving practitioners in the review, development, and training around these electives, inviting them to serve in our new three-tier review system, and asking them to provide feedback on the costs and benefits of the process and ways in which we can more intentionally include democracy within our frameworks. The application process is a comprehensive campus-wide endeavor. It requires collecting and analyzing data from disparate parts of an institution. It involves examining the community engagement or leadership embedded in an institution’s teaching, research, and service functions. And it represents a powerful moment of institutional self-reflection and transformation. Now, those closest to this work will have more opportunities to participate in shaping the Elective Classification. In addition, we have expanded and diversified our National Advisory Committee and created a Presidential Advisory Council with membership from a diverse set of institutions to ensure we are hearing their voices and creating champions for our work.
Reflective of today’s learners and the institutions that serve them
It is vitally important that the institutions included in the Elective Classifications represent diversity within higher education. Over the past year we have reached out to community colleges and Minority Serving Institutions, especially HBCUs, that educate significant numbers of students yet are underrepresented both in applications and participation in this classification. To enhance our outreach efforts, we have held application workshops specifically for community colleges and HBCUs and partnered with the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions. We worked with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) to offer a webinar for Hispanic-Serving Institutions and explore new partnerships that will help us increase outreach and build capacity among a diverse range of postsecondary institutions.
Collective action
Because the Elective classifications are neither a ranking nor a competition, we value the power of collaboration. They exist in part to highlight exemplary applications and projects as a tool for learning, which is why we will create a community of practice following the January announcement of the 2024 Classified campuses to support continuous improvement. To further our commitment, we will offer direct feedback to institutions by way of a report on their applications whether they are classified or not. We also are creating research co-labs that will use the data we have collected since 2005 to develop a research agenda focused on understanding and disseminating the trends in community engagement and leadership for public purpose. These co-labs will invite scholar-practitioners to participate in creating catalyst papers, blogs, and a book project to connect higher education more strongly to its public mission. We hope this collective action will drive transformation and continuous improvement at both the institutional and field levels.
In the future, we plan to create a suite of electives that speak to some of our most pressing national and global challenges. We have begun a feasibility study to explore four public good areas that have the potential to move institutions forward to better serve students, communities, and society. Those areas are Sustainability, Indigenous-Serving Institutions, Military-Connected Students and Justice-Impacted Students. For the past eight months, we have worked with postsecondary institutions, organizations, field practitioners, and individuals in these areas to collect their expertise, insight, and experience as we decide which of these themes we will launch as our new elective(s). We hope this work, along with the forthcoming changes to the Universal Classifications, will provide a more holistic view of the higher education landscape and better equip our nation’s colleges and universities to contribute to the solutions to real-world problems.
What’s next
We plan for the next iteration of the Community Engagement elective classification to incorporate this new vision and goals. The application period will open on January 26, with a deadline for submissions of April 1, 2025. Institutions that are classified will be announced in January 2026. Starting with that application, the Community Engagement cycle will occur every three years with the following cycle in 2029. Institutions that obtain classification will retain it for six years. Institutions classified in 2024 will have the option to reclassify in 2029 or 2032.
While not yet reflective of these changes, the 2024 Community Engagement classified campuses will be announced in early January 2024. For more information about the changes, please visit the website.
The 2024 Leadership for Public Purpose elective classification is set to be announced in June 2024. The application deadline is fast approaching on December 15, 2023. More information on the timeline for this classification can be found here.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Electives please attend our interactive Year in Review taking place virtually on January 9, 2024 at 3PM-4:30PM EST. You can register at https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIlceuvpj4sE9BuXDye_5vEM1zJKgM9h2MT
Marisol Morales is the executive director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications
Today, the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching announced that the 2025 Carnegie Classifications will include a new Basic Classification that will organize institutions based on multidimensional categories that reflect a variety of characteristics about today’s colleges and universities. While this is an exciting development in our work to reimagine the Carnegie Classifications, it is not the final step. We want your feedback, and there is more on that below.
We are making these changes to better capture the dynamic and complex missions of today’s higher education institutions. The original Carnegie Classifications debuted in 1973, and while they have undergone updates in the last 50 years, the overall organizational approach has largely stayed the same. The Basic Classification applies a single label to each institution (such as Master’s Colleges and Universities: Medium Programs) that focuses on the highest degree awarded, and this narrow focus can often lead to dissimilar institutions being grouped together – which goes against the purpose of a classification system. For example, institutions that are similar in one way (such as awarding more than 100 master’s degrees but fewer than 200) may be very different on other institutional characteristics, like their size and academic programming, the ratio of undergraduate to graduate students, their fuller degree and certificate profile, whether and how they offer distance education, whether their campus is more residential, their financial resources, and so on. Instead of a single dimension, we want to create groupings of institutions that share similarities on multiple characteristics.
We know the Basic Classification has historically played a pivotal role in categorizing and characterizing colleges and universities in the United States, and we have also heard from institutional researchers and other users of the classifications that the current structure can be limiting. Our hope is that by shifting the overall classification structure to use a variety of universal, multidimensional institutional characteristics that better organize similar types of institutions, we will create a more usable classification system for researchers, policymakers, funders, and others.
Provide Your Feedback
As we design this multidimensional classification structure, we welcome your input – especially as we want to ensure the Carnegie Classifications are more usable for the field. We are particularly interested in hearing your thoughts about such topics as:
- Which dimensions or characteristics would maximize the creation of peer groups of institutions (e.g., size, highest degree awarded, location, financial resources)
- How those dimensions would be defined (e.g., how to define location)
- How many dimensions and how many groupings would be most useful (e.g., three dimensions that create 48 groupings; five dimensions that create 100 groupings)
- Whether certain types of institutions, such as colleges that primarily award associate degrees, should have different characteristics in creating peer groups
- What additional data would be helpful for users to create custom groupings (e.g., religious affiliation, MSI status)
- How certificate or other non-degree program data should be utilized
- The continued development or release of data that was incorporated in the other universal classifications (i.e., Undergraduate Instructional Program, Graduate Instructional Program, Enrollment Profile, Undergraduate Profile, Size and Setting)
- What should be the name of this classification, which has been known as the Basic Classification since 2005
- Other topics related to classification usage or design preferences
If you are interested in sharing input with the Carnegie Classifications team about these topics, please visit the 2025 Carnegie Classifications webpage. We are asking for all feedback to be submitted by February 29, 2024. We will then make final decisions and release the methodology later next year.
We look forward to hearing your ideas and input, and we will share more updates and reflections on this blog as we review the feedback and prepare for the 2025 release of the classifications.
Mushtaq Gunja and Sara Gast are executive director and deputy executive director, respectively, of the Carnegie Classifications.
As the work continues to modernize and reimagine the Carnegie Classifications, we want to share insights we have gained as we look toward the release by early 2025 of a new set of classifications that will include a new research classification methodology.
The Carnegie Classifications were created to be a tool to organize the diverse universe of approximately 4,000 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States to further the study of higher education. But the world — and American postsecondary education — has changed tremendously over the past half century. That is why the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching are collaborating to develop new and more refined versions of the classifications to better reflect in contemporary terms the public purpose, mission, focus and impact of higher education.
The most well-known component of the Carnegie Classifications is the Basic classification, which places all U.S. colleges and universities into peer groups based on the highest degree awarded. This classification has been released 10 times in its 50 years of existence. Sometimes there have been major changes, as with the creation of the Baccalaureate/Associate’s Colleges Classification. Sometimes the changes have been more minor, as when small adjustments were made to the methodology of the Special Focus Institutions. In recent years, the classifications have been reissued every three years. We plan to remain on the same three-year cycle and release the revised classifications by early 2025.
The current Basic classification is one way to sort American colleges and universities, but it fails to recognize the wide range of institutional missions that exist today. In addition, this degree-based classification has become hierarchical over time, with most of the attention focused on doctorate-granting universities. Institutions often view the R1 (doctoral universities with very high research activity) category within the Basic classification as the “best” colleges in the country and a prize to be sought, often with the belief that prestige, funding, faculty and students will follow. As a result, an increasing number of institutions award doctoral degrees and conduct research in a quest to be categorized as R1 or R2 (doctoral universities with high research activity). Expanding a research enterprise might be a perfectly worthwhile goal for some institutions, but the current Basic classification reduces our doctoral institutions merely to the amount of research they do and ignores other institutional missions around teaching, learning and serving the community. Moreover, based on our experience over the past year, we worry that the classifications are not properly capturing how much research is actually happening. For these reasons, we think it is time to revisit how the Carnegie Classifications designate research activity.
This will not be the first time the classification’s research methodology has undergone changes. Part of the original premise of the Carnegie Classifications was to categorize institutions by knowledge production, which has meant doctoral institutions generally have been organized in some capacity by research. The two categories commonly referred to as R1 and R2 were included in the inaugural classification. The criteria was simple: Research I was limited to the top 50 institutions by federal grants received, and Research II essentially was the rest of the top 100, with a few additional components. This definition was reset and revised in 1987 and 1994. When the classification criteria were changed again in 2000, the R1 and R2 labels were dropped, and the terminology was shifted to “extensive” and “intensive” doctoral production. In 2005, the methodology for the research classification was revised once more to consider broader research activity and made much more complex.
That methodology, which remains in use today, has proven challenging to navigate. It starts out simply enough: Any university that annually awards at least 20 research doctoral degrees and spends at least $5 million on research qualifies at least for R2 status. But determining which of those universities should be categorized as R1 involves an evaluation of institutional data with a complicated 10-metric formula that uses normative and relative scores. The result is an opaque process and a moving target that makes it impossible to determine exactly what a university must do to become classified as R1. There is also a cap on the number of institutions that could be considered as having “very high research activity.”
Additionally, while the “very high research activity” label is intended to be just that – a group of institutions that are doing large amounts of research – the current formula measures that concept through the lens of a comprehensive research profile. These are institutions that offer STEM, humanities, social science and other types of research degrees and spend research funding in both science and engineering and non-science and non-engineering fields. This approach to defining “very high research activity” has resulted in several types of institutions not being included in the R1 category despite doing significant amounts of research. For instance, no Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are currently classified as R1. Historical and systemic racism in funding opportunities is partly to blame. Another culprit is the Carnegie Classifications’ complex methodology that disadvantages institutions, including public universities whose state legislatures or governing boards restrict the programs they can offer, that conduct research in a limited number of fields. This methodology minimizes the recognition of research activity at regional public institutions more than it does at private and flagship state universities.
We also have received quite a bit of feedback about the non-research sections of the Basic classification. Like the research portion of the Basic Classification, the other categories in the classification also have undergone changes over the years. In 1994, a Tribal Colleges and Universities group was added. In 2000, as we noted above, a Baccalaureate/Associate’s Colleges Classification was created to recognize institutions that granted both bachelor and associate degrees. But for the most part, the overarching structure of the classification has remained the same: Institutions are primarily categorized by the highest degree they award.
One consistent theme we have heard is that institutions have changed greatly over the past 50 years and, accordingly, the classifications could use a modern refresh. Institutions have told us that the current framework of applying a single label (e.g., Master’s Colleges and Universities: Medium Programs) is too limiting and does not best describe the interesting and important work that they’re doing. We also have observed that some classification categories have grown extremely large over time. That has resulted in groups that contain a variety of different types of institutions — which goes against the purpose of a classification system. We are currently studying how we might adjust the current classification categories to better describe the richness and diversity of today’s colleges and universities without relying solely on the highest degree offered.
As we noted, the revised classifications (and the new Social and Economic Mobility classification) will be released in early 2025. We plan to issue more updates as we get closer to that date. Look for more specifics later this fall on the forthcoming revisions.
Mushtaq Gunja and Sara Gast are executive director and deputy executive director, respectively, of the Carnegie Classifications.
The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) featured a Q&A with Mushtaq Gunja and Sara Gast, executive director and deputy executive director, respectively, of the Carnegie Classifications in its August edition of the eAIR newsletter, which provides news to the higher education research community. Reimagining the Carnegie Classifications: A Q&A details the vision and purpose behind modernizing the classifications, plans for changes to the Basic Classification and methodology for research designations, as well as the timeline for continuing this work.
Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of Carnegie Classifications and senior vice president at the American Council on Education is featured in a Q&A in the May-June 2023 edition of Trusteeship Magazine, a publication for members of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB). A Question for Mushtaq Gunja shares more about the plans ahead for the Carnegie Classifications and the vision for reimagining them. The article, included below with permission from AGB, discusses the potential impact of the revisions, what trustees should know about the classifications, as well as an overview of the timeline for updates.
This year’s ACE Annual Meeting (ACE2023), held in Washington DC April 13-15, with more than 1,000 higher education leaders in attendance, featured a range of sessions on new efforts to modernize the Carnegie Classifications. Attendees were able to learn more about the current work and plans ahead for ACE’s partnership with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which was announced in February 2022, to reimagine how our nation groups and categorizes its diverse higher education landscape. ACE is leading a broad effort to revamp the Carnegie Classifications as a catalyst for incentivizing and recognizing institutional behavior that advances equitable outcomes and learner-centered solutions.
The conference featured a plenary session along with four concurrent sessions focused on the past, present, and future of the Carnegie Classifications:
- Fifty Years of Change and the Future of the Carnegie Classification. The plenary session featured Maria Spies, co-CEO and co-founder of Holon IQ; Doug Lederman, editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed; Ted Mitchell, president of ACE; and Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classifications. The session began with an overview of the evolution of higher education since the classifications’ formation and a forecast of what may be ahead, paired alongside data about student and workforce needs moving forward. The discussion focused in particular on the growth of credentials and non-degree learning programs in recent years and ways alternative credentials and degrees should work together in support of students. The panelists noted that in many ways institutions are changing and adjusting based on demand and what may be coming, but they shared a number of ideas about how the sector could continue to respond and position itself to make the case that postsecondary education is relevant and important.
- Reimagining the Future of the Carnegie Classification: 2023 Updates. Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classifications, and Sara Gast, its deputy executive director, shared an overview of the current Carnegie Classification system and the planned next steps for updating and adding to the classifications. They discussed their thinking around a variety of variables and data points to create multidimensional classifications that are better descriptors of institutions as compared to the single label used now. The plan to move forward kicked off with the recent launch of a new website. They shared plans to announce a revised framework for the universal classifications by 2024, with the release of the classifications themselves in early 2025.
- The Future of Carnegie Electives. Marisol Morales, executive director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications, and Paul LeMahieu, senior vice president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, shared more about the current work of the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement and plans for the development of new elective classifications. They discussed how ACE and Carnegie are partnering to explore new possible elective classifications for a number of areas, including sustainability, indigenous-serving campuses, students connected to the military, and people impacted by the justice system. The process will continue with feedback from field experts and an announcement of the next elective classification launch later this year.
- Internationalization of the Community Engagement Elective. This panel, featuring Lauren Bartshe, associate director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications; Mitra Gusheh, executive manager of social impact at the University of Technology Sydney; and Matthew Grant, director of community engagement at Simon Fraser University, discussed the ways nationally specific frameworks are being used to help assess community engagement. Panelists shared how Canada and Australia are currently piloting the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement framework. The panel explored how countries are learning from each other while also demonstrating how faculty and students engage with their communities in different ways.
- Using Carnegie Classifications to Highlight Institutions That Create Social and Economic Mobility. Michael Itzkowitz, founder and president of the Higher Education Advisory Group, and Deborah Santiago, co-founder and chief executive officer at Excelencia in Education, joined Kyle Whitman, chair of the technical review panel for the Carnegie Classifications of Higher Education, in a session on the development of a new social and economic mobility classification. The discussion included an overview of the process for creating the new methodology and its potential components. The panel shared thoughts on the opportunity for creating better measurements of mobility and the broader impact of the novel classification.
For more on the Carnegie Classifications and to learn more about what’s next, continue to visit the new and updated website here.
The American Council on Education (ACE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching today unveiled a new website as part of their efforts to reimagine the Carnegie Classifications and modernize the nation’s leading framework for grouping institutions of higher education. Consistent with the vision for the Carnegie Classifications to reflect today’s diverse postsecondary ecosystem, the new website brings with it a number of new tools and designs meant to increase transparency and further its usage for a wide audience.
The new website expands the ways the Carnegie Classifications can be used by creating an opportunity to view, filter, and sort institutions by their basic and elective classifications along with other criteria, including an institution’s location and population served—allowing for the classifications to be used in a number of ways to help group and identify institutions. The new website for the first time combines the elective and universal classification data into one streamlined website. This adjustment allows for a fuller picture of an institution’s characteristics, while also creating a universal hub for data and information related to the Carnegie Classifications, including news and changes ahead.
The site introduces several new features including:
- Modern search functionality. The new website includes accessible and easy-to-use search filters, allowing researchers, practitioners, and the general public opportunities to discover commonalities between institutions, identify peer groups, and see the diversity within the higher education landscape. This will facilitate classifications that are more approachable and accessible to a broader set of people and potential users.
- Additional context on the Elective Classifications. Users can easily view, sort, and search by the Community Engagement Elective Classification, which is viewable alongside the universal classifications, allowing for a more robust usage of the classifications. The website serves as a central resource for institutions to learn more and apply for Elective Classifications.
- Providing greater transparency around the methodology behind the classifications. The new website provides a more accessible and clearer sense of how classifications are defined and the methodology used, making it easier for institutions, researchers, and the public to understand how the classifications are formed.
- New resources and blog: Check back here for what’s next. The website includes new resources on the Carnegie Classifications to keep users up to date on key research, analysis, and announcements. As the Carnegie Classifications get ready for changes and additions in the future, check back to see what’s in store and anticipated dates for future updates. We will continue to provide updates on any forthcoming changes to the basic and elective classifications, as well as a series of whitepapers written to inform a new universal Social and Economic Mobility classification.
Reimagining the Carnegie Classifications is made possible by a cohort of funders dedicated to utilizing the classifications to help postsecondary education advance students’ social and economic mobility driven by learner-centered outcomes. Our partners include ECMC Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Imaginable Futures, Kresge Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, as well as a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.