The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education ®News & Announcements
2021 Classification Update **RELEASED DECEMBER 15, 2021**
IF YOU FIND A GLITCH, PLEASE NOTIFY Victor Borden, vborden@iu.edu. Thank you for contributing to our quality control processes.
We have delayed the next patch until next week for two reasons:
- To accommodate the most recently received requests for changes; and
- The database platform on which our development system is based is in the process of being updated by our university and so access to the system is intermittent.
New Patches and Updates Posted Wednesday, Jan 5, 2021 late in the day
Continued thanks to those helping us ensure that the Carnegie Classifications are glitch free by the end of public review. As of Jan 5, we have made the following changes
- Several institutions classified as baccalaureate/associates are now rightly back in their respective baccalaureate categories (depending on program mix)
- The student mix calculation was fixed for the associates categories (high traditional and high nontraditional were reversed)
- Additional name changes
- Addition of six institutions that were inadvertently added to the “closed institution” list Other Classifications
- Undergraduate Profile: Remaining glitches with the transfer-in rate and selectivity index were corrected
- Graduate Profile: fixed a glitch with the dominant program determination Other
- The list of Hispanic Serving Institutions was cleaned up
- The Basic 2015 classification on the Public File was corrected
The 2021 Carnegie Classification Update Public Review period starts when the public review version is released on December 15, 2021. Email messages have been sent to Chief Executive Officers, Chief Administrative Officers, Institutional Research Directors and several others as identified through the Higher Education Directory. The Public Review will last about 6 weeks. The classification will be announced as official by the end of January 2022.
Data Sources
The 2021 Classification update will be based on the following data sources:
- IPEDS 2019-20 Completions
- IPEDS Fall 2020 Enrollment (preliminary)
- IPEDS Fall 2020 Human Resources (preliminary file)
- FY20 NSF Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey*
- FY19 NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (GSS)
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, 2018 and 2021 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 Public Purpose Institute at Albion College. 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, 2021 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/.
