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The Carnegie Classifications are an enduring institution in higher education—but they’re about to undergo a face-lift that could be dramatic.
This week’s episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, explores the recent news that the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—which created the main system we use to differentiate among types of colleges and universities about 50 years ago—has chosen the American Council on Education, the largest and most diverse association of college presidents, to remake and run the classifications going forward.
Tim Knowles, Carnegie president, and Ted Mitchell, president of ACE, discuss the new partnership and why the time is right to refresh the classifications. They emphasize their plan to add a significant focus on whether and how much colleges and universities contribute to social mobility and racial equity, potentially by adding an entirely new classification that would sort institutions by the degree to which they are engines of mobility and equity.
The episode includes a conversation with Brendan Cantwell, an associate professor and coordinator of the higher, adult and lifelong education program at Michigan State University, who discusses the potential unintended consequences of focusing too much on social mobility in college rankings.
Listen to this week’s episode here. And find out more about The Key here.
