The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education ®News & Announcements
2018 Classification Update
The public review period ended on February 15, 2019.
Until the next (2021) update of the classifications, we will make limited changes, most notably, institutional name changes. We will check the IPEDS data periodically to identify name changes. Institutions that seek to have the name changed within our system before it is registered through an IPEDS data product can inform us of the change and we will verify through institutional web sites and other official sources that the name change is official. Requests for other types of change will be considered and made when warranted according to our judgment.
Please contact us (ccihe@iu.edu) if you have any questions or concerns. We update the Public Data File and Summary Tables with every set of revisions. The February 15 revisions also included updates to the CIP Code Mapping File and the Research Activity Index documentation (but not the research activity index spreadsheet).
Major Changes
The Doctoral Universities categories have been reshaped to better accommodate “Doctor's degree – professional practice” within our methodology. These degrees, formerly referred to as “first professional degrees” and including such degrees as the MD, JD, Pharm.D., D.Div, etc., have previously not been considered as part of the Basic Classification methodology. The specific changes are as follows:
- We expanded the criteria for entering into the doctoral categories. In addition to the former threshold (conferring 20 or more “research/scholarship” doctoral degrees), institutions that conferred 30 or more “professional practice” doctoral degrees across two or more programs were also included.
- The first two doctoral university categories include institutions that conferred at least 20 research/scholarship doctorates and reported a minimum of $5 million dollars of total research expenditures through the NSF HERD survey. The research activity index was then used to determine a cutoff between the “very high research activity” (R1) institutions, and “high research activity” (R2) institutions. (Note that this represents a return to the labels used for those categories in 2005 and 2010).
- The remaining institutions that either had less than $5 million in research expenditures or conferred fewer than 20 research/scholarship doctorates, were placed into the third, newly named Doctoral/Professional Universities category.
Data Sources
The 2018 Classification update is based on the following data sources:
About the Carnegie Classification®
The Carnegie Classification® has been the leading framework for recognizing and describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education for the past four and a half 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, 2010, 2015 and 2018 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.
Elective Community Engagement Classification
The Elective Classification on Community Engagement is under the stewardship of the Swearer Center at Brown University. Click here to access the website.
Using the Site
The menus at the top (in full screen mode) or through the menu icon above right (smaller views) provide access to extensive documentation as well as tools for looking up specific institutions, listing all institutions in a particular classification category, aggregating categories within a classification, and examining points of intersection across two or more classifications.
More Usage Guidelines
Recommended Citation (APA Format)
Current Version
Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research (n.d.). The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, 2018 edition, Bloomington, IN: Author.
Web Site
The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (n.d.). About Carnegie Classification. Retrieved (date optional) from http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/.
