Over the past several years, as many as 25 states have used the Carnegie Classifications in some form of policy or practice, including funding formulas. The 2025 Carnegie Classifications provide states with a modernized, comprehensive framework to support higher education policy and funding decisions through three distinct components: the Institutional Classification, Research Activity Designations, and the Student Access and Earnings Classification (SAEC).
To help navigate the updates, two briefs published by HCM Strategists provide state leaders with ideas on how to use the 2025 Carnegie Classifications to improve higher education policy and student outcomes. Beyond Labels: How States Can Use the 2025 Carnegie Classification to Understand and Advance Student Success, which focuses on the SAEC, and Carnegie Classifications Redefined: A Framework for Smarter State Policy and Better Outcomes, which discusses the Institutional Classification, highlight how the reimagined classifications provide state agencies and systems, legislators, and advocates with a tool to drive toward their collective goals.
As the briefs outline, the updated Classifications can be used in a number of ways and intend to prompt questions that can guide strategic planning and analysis. For example, states can leverage the Institutional Classification to establish quality peer groups for meaningful benchmarking, allowing them to compare similar institutions on common performance outcomes, understand how institutions utilize resources and respond to policies, and identify best practices worth scaling. States can expand eligibility for research and economic development programs beyond traditional R1 and R2 institutions, recognizing the contributions of a broader variety of institutions including the newly designated Research Colleges and Universities (RCUs).
Additionally, the SAEC offers states a third-party tool to assess how institutions are serving students from their communities and helping them achieve strong economic outcomes, with earnings measures that account for regional economic factors. This approach equips states with data that can further their goals for economic mobility and student success. They can use the classifications to support learning among peer campuses, disseminating practices from institutions with strong SAEC metrics and developing improvement agendas for underperforming institutions. Legislators can promote the SAEC as a lens for public accountability, asking how current policies reinforce economic mobility and ensuring students from economically challenged communities have access to high-performing institutions. By leveraging these classifications, states can further their work to deliver a more transparent, outcomes-focused higher education ecosystem that rebuilds public trust and delivers measurable value to students and communities.
For more, please read the briefs:
Brief 1: Beyond Labels: How States Can Use the 2025 Carnegie Classification to Understand and Advance Student Success | Student Access and Earnings Classification
Brief 2: Carnegie Classifications Redefined: A Framework for Smarter State Policy and Better Outcomes | Institutional Classification