The desire to move up is endemic in higher education. So the most recent update of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, released this week for a public-review period, reveals a much hoped-for outcome for some colleges.
Nine universities joined the highest level of research institutions in the updated list, produced by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University’s School of Education, and last updated in 2018. Among the new members of this group of 137 “Doctoral/Very High Research” institutions are Baylor, Old Dominion, and Utah State Universities, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
But this group, known more colloquially as “R1,” also lost three members. Brandeis University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are now classified as “Doctoral/High Research.”
The doctoral classification also includes doctoral/professional institutions, a group that added 73 new colleges to the mix. Most of them were formerly classified as master’s institutions, such as Alabama State and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities, and California State University at Long Beach. In 2018 there were 407 doctoral institutions of all types, compared with 472 in the 2021 update.
The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed the classification more than 40 years ago as a way to distinguish institutions for educational-research purposes. The system, which in 2021 categorized about 3,900 two- and four-year colleges, is now widely seen as a ladder to climb. In part, that’s because classifications are used by funding agencies and are also the basis for the categories of annual rankings by publications such as U.S. News & World Report.
In the days to come, colleges will undoubtedly tout their new status with a flurry of press releases and tweets, much as they did after the last update in 2018 and before that in 2015.
The new classifications, which college administrators can review for the next six weeks, will be official by the end of January. Explore the table below to see the colleges that moved into — or out of — the three categories of doctoral institutions:
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