Carnegie Foundation Overhauls Its Classification System

As reported in the November 18, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching unveiled on Thursday the most sweeping changes in more than three decades in its system of classifying American colleges and universities.

The methodology is a "fundamental reconsideration" of the foundation's approach to institutional categorization, Carnegie officials said. Five new categories of institutions will augment the single-scheme method that has been in place since 1970. Carnegie's officials said they hoped the new classifications would bring greater precision to the categorizing of more than 4,000 institutions.

The five new categories that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is adding to its classification system for colleges and universities are as follows:

Undergraduate instructional program:Classifies institutions based on the level of undergraduate degrees awarded (associate or bachelor's); the proportion of bachelor's-degree majors in the arts and sciences and in the professional fields; and the extent to which an institution awards graduate degrees in the same fields in which it awards undergraduate degrees.

Graduate instructional program:Examines the nature of graduate education, with a focus on the program mix. Classification is based on the level of graduate degrees awarded (master's, professional, or doctoral); the number of fields represented by the degrees awarded; and the mix or concentration of degrees by broad disciplinary domain. Institutions are classified according to the breadth of graduate offerings and the concentration of degrees in certain fields or combinations of fields.

Enrollment profile:Groups institutions by the mix of graduate or professional students and undergraduate students, giving an approximate measure of a student populations' "center of gravity." Such distinctions can have implications for infrastructure, services, and allocation of resources, the foundation says.

Undergraduate profile:Classifies colleges and universities with respect to the proportion of undergraduate students who attend part or full time; the achievement characteristics of first-year students (including entrance-examination scores, which correspond to the selectivity of undergraduate admissions); and the proportion of entering students who transfer from another institution. Differences in those areas inform how an institution serves its students, including issues such as student services, the scheduling of classes, extracurricular activities, and time required to get a degree, among others, the foundation says.

Size and setting:Categorizes institutions by enrollment and residential character, variables that correspond to institutional "structure, complexity, culture, finances, and other factors," the foundation says.