01/11/2011
Texto original
The Carnegie Classifications: A Brief Introduction
Paper Prepared for the Unicamp Journal on Higher Education | July 10, 2011
Chun-Mei Zhao
Former director of the Carnegie Classifications at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She is now the Director of Student Experience in Research University (SERU) International Consortium at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at University of California, Berkeley.
Former director of the Carnegie Classifications at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She is now the Director of Student Experience in Research University (SERU) International Consortium at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at University of California, Berkeley.
The Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education is a series of typologies of colleges and universities in the United States that group comparable institutions into one category and dissimilar institutions into different categories. It is an essential approach to recognizing, describing, and organizing institutional diversity and provides a bird’s eye view of the higher education system. It is particularly crucial for the US higher education system, a complex system with well over 4,500 accredited, degree-granting (Associate’s degrees or above) institutions, and an ever-wider range of providers offering a large number of distinct niches. The Carnegie Classification system provides an essential framework to study the higher education system and its institutions. This article provides a brief overview of the history of the Carnegie Classifications, its usage, its challenges, and the systematic changes observed through the two most recent classification updates.
A Brief History. The Carnegie Classification was originally developed in the early 1970s by the then Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, the purpose for the undertaking was straightforward and self-serving. At that time, the Carnegie Commission was conducting a series of large scale and systematic studies of higher education that required a more sophisticated and comprehensive approach to sorting institutions into various types, for sampling and discussion purposes. However, at that time, US did not have a comprehensive and sophisticated classification system of higher education institutions. There were only simple classifications based on control status (such as private, public), level (such as two-year, four-year), and degree conferral levels (such as bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral), and whether they are accredited (Douglass, 2006). These existing ways of classification were overly simplistic and cannot meet the Commission’s analytical needs. Without a systematic classification, analysis needed in the Commission’s national studies was cumbersome and cannot reach to their intended depth.
To address this challenge, the Carnegie Commission invented a classification system of its own. The Classification used empirical data to identify meaningful and intuitive institutional groupings that were relatively homogeneous with respect to the functions of the institutions as well as characteristics of students and faculty members. The Classification divided institutions of higher education into several general categories: Doctorate-granting universities, Comprehensive Universities and Colleges, Liberal Arts Colleges, Two-year Colleges and Institutes, and Professional Schools and Other Specialized Institutions. Each category is further divided into subcategories. The classification criteria include a series of measures such as level of degree offerings, size, Ph.D. production, research funding and comprehensiveness of mission.
In 1973, based on extensive requests from the field, the Carnegie Commission published its first classification listings of institutions, intended to assist research on higher education. The Classification became an instant success, and has been widely used and adopted by multiple stakeholders since then. As we know, institutions are not static – over the years, new institutions are founded, while some previously existed institutions die, yet other institutions evolved and morphed into different institutional types. These various changes shape and reshape the contours of higher education. To reflect these changes, the Carnegie Classification was updated periodically -- in 1976, 1987, 1994, 2000, 2005 and 2010, based on the most recent data available at the time of update.
Classification Uses—Both Intended and Unintended. The Carnegie Classification was intended as a descriptive tool to take an inventory of what the higher education is composed of, without adding any judgment with respect to the relative importance, value, or quality of each of the institutional categories. It also provides a reference point for examining long-term changes at the system level. Its value lies in being a very useful analytical tool in sampling and reporting data in studying students, faculty and institutions in the system. In addition, it is an effective tool for identifying an institution’s peer institutions—which serves as a foundation for generating external benchmarks for understanding an institution’s current standing, pinpointing key areas for attention, and guiding policy development.
The Classification is also an important communication tool. Once a classification category is mentioned in the community, the basic understanding associated with the category can be invoked without explicit explanation or further elaboration. People have a common understanding on the meaning of the specific category and automatically search for institutions in the same category as anchors for sense making.
The Carnegie Classification has also been used in many ways, often unintended and some are well beyond the originally intended purposes. For example, the Carnegie Classification is often equated with the identity of an institution. This is problematic because the classification is based on a few simple criteria and institution identity on the other hand encompasses much broader parameters such as cultural, historical, and often emotional appeals. Many times, an institution has changed a great deal and according to the classification criteria it would be classified into a different category. However, we often heard back from the institution community lamenting the “loss of identity” as a result of classification change.
Classification has also been used in various aspects in the policy sphere. For example, some state funding formulae are based on Carnegie classification with research universities getting larger shares of research dollars. In some cases, faculty salary levels are also set based on institution’s classification designation. Some higher education associations use Carnegie classification to determine membership dues and publishers use the Carnegie Classification to determine levels if subscription fees. The most influential usage of the Carnegie classification is by the US News and world report, which uses it as a base for ranking colleges and universities.
As mentioned earlier, the Carnegie Classification was established a value-neutral cognitive tool; that is, without reference to quality differences. The classification criteria employed do not indicate quality difference. However, once the Classification was established, it took on a life of its own (See Figure 1). Among the most controversial and criticized is that “categories has taken on the practical meaning of ladder of prestige” (Brewer, Gates, & Goldman, 2004). Some flat out claimed “Carnegie Classification” as “Carnegie ranking.” Some pointed out that Carnegie Classification has “set off a competitive rush by institutions to meet up the operation criteria” to move up the ladder that it seemed to have created (Thelin, 2004). The wide acceptance may be its greatest liability, as its present uses have far exceeded its original purpose.
Recent Classification Changes. Given the perpetual mingling between classification and rankings, in 2005, the Carnegie Foundation conducted an overhaul of the classification system by introducing a multiple classification approach. The change is in part to mitigate the effect of treating the classification as a ranking system, which has been a driver of change in higher education—as we have observed in decades of institutional changes in Classification that more and more institutions have been forgoing its original mission and actively seeking to “move up the ladder” as their strategic focus.
Furthermore, the revision of the Carnegie Classification is also driven by the consideration that higher education institutions have becoming increasingly complex. Important dimensions of institutional diversity cannot be covered or described by a single framework. In particular, undergraduate education is an essential component of what most colleges and universities do. However, for many institutions awarding graduate level degrees, their undergraduate education in terms of program focus, student characteristics, and size and setting dimensions were completely missing from the Basic Classification.
The 2005 revision represented a landmark event in the classification history-- five new classifications were introduced together with a substantially revised Basic Classification. The five new schemes are organized around three fundamental characteristics that differentiate institutions:
· At what setting? (Size & Setting classification[5]).
The 2005 update allowed us, for the first time, to examine institutions on a broad array of institutional characteristics at both undergraduate and graduate levels, such as program focus, institution size, setting, student characteristics (enrollment status, academic preparation, and transfer situation), program coverage and breadth of instructional programs. These classifications provide different lenses through which to view U.S. colleges and universities, offering researchers greater analytic flexibility.
As to the traditional framework (the Basic Classification), two drastic changes were introduced. The first is to unpack the 2-year associate’s college category, which grouped the overwhelmingly largest share of institutions (over 42%, or close to 1700 institutions) under one category prior to 2005. The 2005 update classified this group of colleges into 14 sub-categories based on control, geographic location, size, and single and multiple campuses arrangements. As a result, the basic classification has retained the same number of broad categories (6 categories: Associate’s colleges, Doctorate-granting institutions, Master’s colleges and universalities, Baccalaureate colleges, Special focus institutions, and Tribal colleges) but with a much expanded number of subcategories (33 in total). The other substantial change was within doctoral granting institutions. For this group, basic classification designation is determined jointly from both aggregated and per-capita levels of research activity indices, derived from seven research measures[6].
The multi-classification approach is certainly more complex, at the cost of the simplicity of the traditional framework. It requires serious efforts from the classification users to understand each classification and its respective grouping criteria. That said, it does provide more nuanced classification and possibilities for better matching classification to its purpose as well as for better customization. The users of the classifications assume the responsibility for making judgment about which classification(s) is appropriate to use for a given study and at what aggregation levels, and make selections accordingly.
Classification is a powerful phenomenon. Once established, it becomes the “furniture of the mind” that anchors conversations and dialogues and further exploration. It also has a time lag for people to accept new classifications while the traditional framework has been so ingrained in people’s mind after 40 years of establishment. The Basic Classification is still the most talked about and the most used classification but the other newer schemes are catching up. More and more institutions are starting to use the multiple classifications to identify their peer institutions and to gain a more nuanced understanding about their program, students and settings.
Classification Challenges. Conducting classifications at the national level is fraught with challenges. There are three major challenges: availability and limitation of national data, timing of data, and determining the “right” category boundaries.
The Classification is an empirical classification that used nationally available data. Choosing which data sets to use is a sensitive matter and it often involves a tradeoff between the data coverage and data quality. In the US, the Classification data include National Science Foundation data, National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and other proprietary data such as the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges. All these data based on institution self reporting. Even with some validation mechanism in place at the respective agencies, there is still room for errors. The most commonly seen errors are due to explanations of certain data definition.
Timing of data is also an inherent drawback of empirical classifications such as the Carnegie Classifications. In essence, the Classification is a snapshot of institutions at a given time. Although we always use the most recently available data at the time of classification, by the time a classification update was completed, the data were already dated. For many established institutions this is not a major concern, but some institutions, especially new institutions, the changes can be rather rapid and drastic and the time issue became more acute. Till now, the update cycle is about every five years; the classification update has a difficult time to keep pace with the development of some new institutions.
Determining category boundaries is also challenging. Aristotle once noted, classification is to cut nature at its joints. This is however very difficult to implement in the Carnegie Classification work. It is true that some classification criteria are fairly easy to divide, such as two-year, four-year institutions, or if an institution granting graduate degrees. However, many underlying classification criteria are continuous variables (such as percentage of arts and sciences focus, enrollment size, and student academic preparation level, etc.). How to identify the location of the “joints” and where exactly to make the cut is very challenging and at times arbitrary. Arbitrary boundaries between categories can create the illusion of discrete categories, despite continuity in the underlying classification variables. Institutions in different categories at the two opposite sides of a boundary are often more similar than their peers in the same category.
Another challenge is with respect to how to integrate multiple characteristics in one classification –it is very limited in terms of how many classification variables that can be used, due to the proliferation of possible categories. Classification thus requires balancing homogeneity within categories against simplicity and parsimony.
Validation of a classification scheme is also problematic. There is no consensus on how the results of a particular approach should be judged (in contrast, for example, to biological taxonomy). Researchers, institutional personnel, and other users inevitably bring their own preconceived notions of similarity and difference shaped by broader cultural understandings, which may themselves be informed by other groupings, such as membership organizations, athletic conferences, and commonly-held notions of institutional prestige. Despite the apparent objectivity of classification, researchers’ subjective judgments and personal biases are inevitably reflected in the selection of classification variables. That said, one reason for the wide acceptance of the Carnegie Classification is due to the neutral standing of the Carnegie Commission, which is also a respected authority and trusted source in higher education research and policy studies.
The Current Development—A Snapshot of Changes in the Past Five Years. In early 2011, Carnegie Foundation released the update of the Carnegie Classifications[7], which makes it possible to examine the changes that happened between the 2005 and the 2010 updates. The two sets of classifications each took a snapshot of time and allowed for examining the evolution of higher education system over the past five years[8].
Several trends were identified. As in the past, the higher education system continues to expand. There are 465 new institutions entered the scene while 222 institutions no longer exist. That makes a net gain of 243 institutions, a 5.5% increase in the number of institutions. The expansion is largely driven by private, for-profit institutions. Private, for-profit institutions rose from 20.7% in 2005 to 26.2% in 2010 while students increased from 5.1% to 9.1%.
Institution changes also happen in two different directions. One is the continuing upward movement, the highest degree levels that institutions offered have been creeping upward; that is, more institutions previously only offering associate degrees began to award baccalaureate degrees; more institutions with BA degrees began to offer master’s degrees, and more institutions with master’s degrees began to offer doctoral degrees. The upward movement of institution evolution has been observed before, due to resource, prestige, and legitimacy associated with higher level degrees.
The other direction of change is an “expansive” motion. That is, institutions expand their program coverage—more instructional programs being offered while the overall programs tilting towards professional fields (in contrast to Arts and Sciences fields). This, to a large degree, reflects institutions responding to market demands in fields that are more directly (at least nominally) related to vocational prospects. Meanwhile, there is a decline of Baccalaureate-Arts and Sciences institutions, these institutions started to offer more professional programs and ended up in the Baccalaureate-diverse category or started to award more master’s programs and moved to Master’s categories. The Baccalaureate-Arts and Sciences category is shrinking.
Another trend of change is the enrollment size of institutions has increased across board both for two-year and four-year institutions, while the overall selectivity (academic preparation level of students) reduces. Enrollment size is one of the main approaches to bringing in resources to institutions. Larger size represents revenue in tuition and fees. It is not surprising that the movement of institutions towards increased sizes. Size is highly correlated with institution stability. Institutions with larger sizes are less likely to fail. On the other hand, failed institutions tend to be institutions with small sizes.
American higher education institutions are competing resources for survival and development. Institutions move toward higher program levels (from two-year to four-year, from associate’s to baccalaureate’s, to master’s and doctoral level), expansion in size, adding more “marketable” professional fields, and reduced selectivity to bring in more students and increasing in size. This seems to suggest institutions are adopting (adapting to) a more for-profit based mentality, which not only has driven the strategic decision for development in the for-profit sector but also has seeped through public and private, not for-profit sectors. This indicates the current environment propels institutions to adapt in directions that are shifting further away from the traditional model of a liberal art college.
Given what is happening in the higher education system, these changes make sense as institutions struggle to secure resources and stay viable-- higher education institutions are under increasingly intense scrutiny –the reduced funding for higher education and increased cost of college education, coupled with the slow economic recovery and soft job market for college graduates, pressure institutions to take in more students with reduced selectivity, and institutions strive to provide highly niche oriented and “more marketable” programs so that they are more attractive to job-oriented students. Private for-profit colleges, with the advantage of offering flexible and dynamic programs, became an active player in the current environment.
Some Comments about Classification. Classification is the most fundamental approach to comparing institutions of higher education-- it is the basis for many research, quality, and policy discussions and explorations. Classification is intrinsically linked to its usage, therefore in designing a classification system, it is important to keep in mind of what it is used for. A classification system is also related to the national or regional context and should be designed based on the unique characteristics of the higher education system in a particular context, such as the size of the system (number of institutions), distribution, important distinguishing characteristics that are meaningful to the nation (or region).
Classifications are also created in the context of specific analytic purposes, and problems can arise when they are adopted for other uses (for example, grant eligibility, funding formulas, or to the define comparison groups used in rankings). Although classifications such as the Carnegie Classification do not imply quality judgments, in practice, users may interpret the various categories as signifying qualitative differences. For a widely-used classification, this can lead to strategic action with respect to the classification itself, possibly at the expense of other priorities. This means, in designing and developing a classification system, unintended uses and consequences should be fully examined and ascertained.
Higher education has been going through rapid changes. There are many new phenomena that deserve close examination. For example, more education options have become available, different and mixed instruction delivery modes (online, off-line, hybrid), do-it-yourself style learning opportunities, institution collaboration and partnerships in curriculum and degree production, all challenge the Modus operandi of the traditional higher education institutions, its boundary, or the very definition of a higher education institution as the unit of analysis -- based on which the current classifications were developed. Future classification work needs to fully examine the changes and how classification can adapt to the changing higher education landscape.
Despite the challenges and intricacies, a meaning classification system is indispensable in understanding and studying a higher education system. It represents an essential first step to disentangling the complexity of the higher education system. Classification offers a concise way to characterize the diversity of higher education institutions from a macro-level perspective. Failure to adequately describe and control for institutional diversity can dilute distinctive effects, yield misleading research findings, and render policy initiatives ineffective.
References
Brewer, D. J., Gates, S. M., and Goldman, C.A. (2001). In pursuit of prestige: Strategy and competition in U.S. higher education. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Douglass, J. A. (September/October 2005). Higher education as a national resource. Change, 37(5), 30-39.
Thelin, J. R. (2004). A History of American Higher Education. The John Hopkins University Press.
[1] Undergraduate instructional program classification criteria include the level of undergraduate degrees awarded (associate’s or bachelor’s), program focus (the proportion of bachelor’s degree majors in the arts and sciences and in professional fields), and program coexistence between undergraduate and graduate levels.
[2] Graduate Instructional program Classification criteria include the level of graduate degrees awarded (master’s degrees, and doctoral degrees), the number of fields represented by the degrees awarded, and the mix or concentration of degrees by broad disciplinary domain.
[3] Enrollment Profile Classification is based on the mix of students enrolled at the undergraduate and graduate/professional levels.
[4] The Undergraduate Profile Classification describes the undergraduate population with respect to three characteristics: the proportion of undergraduate students who attend part- or full-time; achievement characteristics of first-year, first-time students; and the proportion of entering students who transfer in from another institution.
[5] The Size and Setting Classification describes institutions’ size and residential character.
[6] Research measures include research & development (R&D) expenditures in science and engineering; R&D expenditures in non-S&E fields; S&E research staff (postdoctoral appointees and other non-faculty research staff with doctorates); doctoral conferrals in humanities fields, in social science fields, in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and in other fields (e.g., business, education, public policy, social work).
[7] Detailed information can be found at classifications.carnegiefoundation.org
[8] Both classification used the most recent data at the time of classification, note there is a time lag in the data-- in the 2005 classification, we used 2003-2004 IPEDS completions data while in 2010, we used 2008-2009 IPEDs completions data.
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