My 16-year-old son has a piece of paper tacked to his bedroom wall. It's a list of about 30 universities carefully arranged next to checkmarks and crosshatches. At first glance, this list might not make much sense to anyone, but perhaps to another teenager. The way he groups colleges is based on campus beauty, geography (you better think this Colorado kid's list of criteria includes “at least 300 days of sunshine a year”), and based on his three elements of athletic ability.
When I asked him to explain the list in more detail, particularly the order of institutions and the rationale behind the incomplete classification, he answered the most important elements to him. I said I look at each campus based on. OK – OK for a 16-year-old, but his higher education policy doesn’t apply to his picky mother.
I asked him about the academic program (does the university offer the academic major he is interested in?), the percentage of students who received financial aid for the cost of attendance, or the diversity of the student body. he shrugged.
As we continued our conversation about his somewhat incomplete list and classification, and as I tried to make sense of what he had constructed, I learned about the efforts being made by the American Council on Education (ACE) to rethink the Carnegie classification. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Higher education institutions known as Carnegie classification.
In 2022, ACE, in collaboration with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education, will begin modernizing the Carnegie Classification, a framework that has been used by researchers, institutions, and policy makers for nearly 50 years to classify America's universities. Did. While I have a few colleagues who understand the evolution of the Carnegie classification over the past 50 years, I imagine the majority of Americans (like my teenage son) would just shrug. I am.
There's a good reason for that. Previous versions of the Carnegie classification were not actually intended for widespread public use or consumption. This classification is a tool developed by a small team of education policy researchers to better understand the characteristics of higher education, and has since been used primarily among the higher education research community.
When ACE and the Carnegie Foundation began considering ways to evolve the Carnegie Classification, the framework, which was once developed by higher education researchers and has remained largely unchanged since 1973, became an evolving and rapidly diversifying framework for higher education. It became clear that we were not keeping up with the field of education. Educational landscape.
“While the original classification structure may have made perfect sense 50 years ago, our way of organizing institutions has not evolved as the institutions themselves have grown and changed in different ways.” said Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of Carnegie Classification.
As Ganja and Carnegie Classification Deputy Executive Director Sarah Gast began talking to stakeholders, from higher education presidents and provosts, to provosts and deans, to higher education researchers and leaders of nonprofit education organizations. They said the Carnegie Classification was actually used to inform federal and state policy and to underpin the ranking framework of university journals. Some campuses may also use the classification for public marketing banners and promotional materials.
In addition to updating the classification framework to better reflect the diversity and complexity of the current higher education landscape, the diversity of classification use cases that are influencing consumer decision-making will also include: , became another factor driving the need to modernize systems.
“When we started our work, our top priority was to learn from as many people as possible how they were engaging with classification, both in intended and unintended ways. The conversation led to many discoveries and convinced us how important it is to include everyone in this work,” Gast said. “We should make the most of this opportunity to step back and reflect on the purpose of our classification system, where it falls short, and how this has driven organizational behavior, and develop new classifications. We want to be more intentional about how we design.”
One of the most important changes made in the latest version of the Carnegie classification, to be released in early 2025, is a revision of the basic classification. This category historically divided all universities into groups based on the highest degree awarded.
As an example of how restrictive it is to organize universities based on this single characteristic, the old classification framework required all universities, including Utah State University, Florida International University, and Penn State University, to have the same Carnegie classification. have. This is because the highest degree these universities award is the Carnegie classification. Research Doctorate (think Ph.D.). But aside from similarities in the highest degrees awarded, these three institutions are incredibly different from each other. These universities have different student demographics, hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding separate each institution from others, and the number of qualifications awarded across degree categories (associates, bachelor's, master's, etc.) The difference in proportions is significant.
The revised basic classification is multifaceted and will better reflect the richness and multifaceted nature of educational institutions and their learners. Although the Carnegie Classification team is still gathering feedback from higher education leaders and other stakeholders, an expanded list of organizing characteristics includes degree and certificate composition, student body size, location type, Factors such as highest degree awarded and transfer rate may be included. .
“One of the limitations of the current classification system is that it relies on the highest degree awarded, which misses a lot of what may be going on at a particular institution and No two institutions are necessarily the same. The purpose of this classification system is to organize institutions into similar types or equivalent groups, and there may be a better way to do it. We think that might mean looking at size, the types of academic programs they offer, or a variety of other characteristics,” Gunja said. “That's where we're gathering feedback this spring. Ultimately, we envision using a more Myers-Briggs-like approach rather than a single trait.”
A more dynamic classification framework allows researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders inputting data into public dashboards, databases, or search tools to help each institution communicate with other similarly situated institutions. You will have access to information that will help you understand how to compare and contrast the
“The reason we undertake this work, and the reason ACE wanted to be involved in redesigning the Carnegie classification, is because it impacts organizational behavior,” said ACE President Ted Mitchell. “We want to modernize our systems, reduce the energy that goes into pursuing research classification, and ultimately focus the Carnegie classification, and the field as a whole, on the students we serve and the outcomes they experience. We believe that if classification calls for action, we want it to be action that benefits the student.”
In addition to revising the Basic Classification, the ACE team has announced new social and We are working on the classification of economic mobility. The social and economic mobility classification classifies institutions based on various student characteristics and student outcomes. The new social and economic mobility classification complements other efforts that have sought to increase transparency about the value of higher education, such as the Higher Education Value Commission task force led by the American Association of State Universities (AASCU). There is a possibility that it will happen.
“The higher education sector is clearly a very powerful driver of social and economic opportunity, and I'm sure it will become even more so over the next decade,” said Carnegie Foundation President Timothy Knowles. “Carnegie classifications have an important role to play. They have a profound impact on public policy, institutional priorities, scholarship, and the allocation of capital. The ongoing changes to social and economic mobility It will highlight the contributions of institutions and create new opportunities for learning and improvement. Ultimately, this work will be good for students, good for higher education institutions and good for the nation.”
Although the 16-year-old version of the organization and classification of universities may forever be incomplete, future changes to the Carnegie classification will ensure a more precise grouping of higher education institutions, increasing their diversity and uniqueness. characteristics should be better reflected.
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