The 2010 Update of the All-inclusive Classifications is Now Available.
The Carnegie Classification has been the leading framework for recognizing and describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education for the past four decades. Starting in 1970, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed a classification of colleges and universities to support its program of research and policy analysis. Derived from empirical data on colleges and universities, the Carnegie Classification was originally published in 1973, and subsequently updated in 1976, 1987, 1994, 2000, 2005, and 2010 to reflect changes among colleges and universities. This framework has been widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students, or faculty.
To ensure continuity of the classification framework and to allow comparison across years, the 2010 Classification update retains the same structure of six parallel classifications, initially adopted in 2005. They are as follows: Basic Classification (the traditional Carnegie Classification Framework), Undergraduate and Graduate Instructional Program classifications, Enrollment Profile and Undergraduate Profile classifications, and Size & Setting classification. These classifications provide different lenses through which to view U.S. colleges and universities, offering researchers greater analytic flexibility.
These classifications were updated using the most recent national data available as of 2010, and collectively they depict the most current landscape of U.S. colleges and universities.
In addition to the all-inclusive classifications, the Carnegie Foundation also completed another round of its Elective Classification on Community Engagement. Unlike the all-inclusive classifications based on secondary analysis of existing national data, elective classifications rely on voluntary participation by institutions, permitting analysis of attributes that are not available in the national data.
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an Act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center. Its current mission is to support needed transformations in American education through tighter connections between teaching practice, evidence of student learning, the communication and use of this evidence, and structured opportunities to build knowledge.
The improvement of teaching and learning is central to all of the Foundation’s work. As we bring together researchers, teachers, policymakers and members of organizations with common interests in education, we work to invent new knowledge and to develop tools and ideas that allow us to foster positive change and enhanced learning in our nation’s schools.
In our first several decades, influential Foundation achievements included the landmark “Flexner Report” on medical education, the development of the Graduate Record Examination, the founding of the Educational Testing Service, and the creation of the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association of America (TIAA-CREF). The Foundation also established the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and was a leader in the effort to provide federal aid for higher education, including Pell Grants, which assist low- and middle-income students.
In 1997, the Foundation moved from Princeton, N.J., to the San Francisco Bay area. In 2004, the Foundation built on Stanford University land near the campus.
More recently, the Foundation’s work focused on moral, civic and political education; preparation for the professions (law, engineering, clergy, medicine and nursing); reform of the Ph.D.; and field-building work with teachers at all levels to develop new models for documenting classroom practice in ways that other educators can study, adapt and implement. The Foundation continues to work with community colleges to improve basic skills education in that sector.
Today, the Foundation, using both technology and face-to-face communication, is closely examining how new technological tools and digital world social networking can contribute to learning at every level of the education spectrum. Working through arrangements with public education, universities, the commercial sector—and the connections among these enterprises—the Foundation seeks to transform how we develop and support school professionals; the tools, materials, ideas and evidence with which they work; and the instructional opportunities that we afford students for learning
We are committed to determining what is working for which students, and in what contexts, and to advancing the process of continuous performance improvement by using evidence from practice to improve practice.
In our current projects, our goal is to double the proportion of students who, within one year of continuous community college enrollment, are mathematically prepared to succeed in further academic study and/or occupational pursuits, regardless of limitations that they may have in language, literacy and mathematics and their ability, on entry, to “do college.”
Governed by a board of trustees, the Foundation is led by its ninth president, Anthony S. Bryk.
