It is World Series time, so why not devote a blog post to one of the most fascinating inside baseball conversations within higher education? The Carnegie classifications have served for decades as perhaps the most prominent way to group colleges into buckets of reasonably similar institutions. Indiana University hosted the Carnegie classifications for a long time, but they ended up moving to the American Council on Education after a rather bizarre planned move to Albion College never ended up happening.
After multiple blue-ribbon panels and meetings across the higher education industry, ACE gave the public the first glimpse of what the Carnegie classifications may look like in 2025. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the final results, but the most concrete change is to the coveted Research I university criteria. Instead of being based on ten criteria, the only two criteria moving forward will be $50 million in research expenditures and 70 doctorates awarded. Other classifications are also likely to change, but many more details are needed before I can comment.
After thinking about this for a while and having a great conversation with The Chronicle of Higher Education on the proposed changes, here are the four big questions that I have at this point.
(1) This changes incentives for research universities, and expect plenty of strategy to reach R1 status. Colleges have always been able to appeal their preliminary classification, and it seems like some institutions have successfully shifted from R2 to R1 status before the final classifications were released. But it is a lot easier to game two clearly defined metrics than a complicated set of variables hidden behind some complicated statistical analyses.
Consider the research expenditures figure, which comes from the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey. HERD data include research expenditures from a range of sources, including federal, industry, foundation, state, and institutional sources. While the first four of these sources are difficult to manipulate, colleges can tweak the amount of institutional funding in a way that meaningfully increases total funding. For example, if faculty are expected to spend 40% of their time on research, the institution can legitimately be seen as putting 40% of that person’s salary on a research line. Some colleges appear to already do this. For example, I found 35 institutions that reported total research expenses between $40 million and $60 million in 2021. The range of institutionally-funded research expenses ranged between $3.7 million and $31.4 million. So there is probably some room for colleges to increase their figures in completely legitimate ways.
The previous R1 criteria heavily rewarded doctoral degree production in a wide range of fields, and now that is gone. This means that health science-focused institutions will now qualify for R1 status, and universities can now feel comfortable reducing their breadth of PhD programs without losing their coveted R1 status. Humanities PhD programs really didn’t need this change, but it is happening anyway.
(2) Will Research I status have less meaning as the club expands? Between 2005 and 2021, the number of universities classified as Research I increased from 96 to 146. The Chronicle’s data team estimates that the number would grow to approximately 168 in 2025 based on current data. Institutions that gain Research I status are darn proud of themselves and have used their newfound status to pursue additional funding. But as the group of Research I institutions continues to grow, expect distinctions within the group (such as AAU membership) to become more important markers of prestige.
(3) Will other classifications of colleges develop? The previous Carnegie classifications were fairly stable and predictable for decades, and this looks likely to change in a big way in 2025. This provides a rare opportunity for others to get into the game of trying to classify institutions into similar groups. Institutional researchers and professional associations may try to rely on the old classifications for a while if the new ones do not match their needs, but there is also the possibility that someone else develops a set of criteria for new classifications.
(4) How will college rankings respond? Both the U.S. News and Washington Monthly rankings have historically relied on Carnegie classifications to help group colleges, with the research university category being used to define national universities and the baccalaureate colleges/arts and sciences category defining liberal arts colleges. But as more colleges have gained research university status, the national university category has swelled to about 400 institutions. The creation of a new research college designation and the unclear fate of master’s and baccalaureate institutions classifications are going to force rankings teams to respond.
I’m not just writing this as a researcher in the higher ed field, as I have been the Washington Monthly data editor since 2012. I have some thinking ahead about how to best group colleges for meaningful comparisons. And ACE will be happy to have colleges stop calling them about how their classification affects where they are located in the U.S. News rankings (looking at you, High Point).
If you made it to the end of this piece, you’re as interested in this rather arcane topic as I am. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next year or two.
Robert Kelchen 