What the Carnegie Classifications Mean for You

For more than 50 years, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been categorizing institutions in a functional but basic way–by the highest degree the institution awards and the amount of research generated by the institution. Even as American higher education changed significantly from the early 1970s, the classifications remained the same. Until recently! In this episode we talk about the classifications, how they were used and why, and what led to the revised classifications that were just released.  

Key Takeaways:

• The Carnegie Foundation partnered with the American Council on Education (ACE) to conduct the first major overhaul of the Carnegie Classifications for Higher Education in almost 50 years.
• Over the three-year process, the team engaged thousands of stakeholders across the higher education sector and other relevant experts about how best to provide more information about an institution through the classifications.  
• For the first time, the Carnegie Classifications bring in information about the student (not just the degree) through the new Student Access and Earnings category. 
• The American Council on Education prefers a three-syllable callout (“EY SEA EE”) rather than a one-syllable word (“ace”) when referring to the organization in shorthand. 

Host:

Doug McKenna
University Registrar, George Mason University
cmckenn@gmu.edu   

Guests:

Mushtaq Gunja
Executive Director of the Carnegie Classification Systems & Senior Vice President 
American Council on Education 

References and Additional Information:

Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education® 

Classification Methodology

American Council on Education

Transcript

00:00.19
For the Record
the opening bumper of the podcast i always have the guest do the opening sort of intro and so you're listening to for the record a registered podcast sponsored by acro and then is it mush talk

00:17.80
Mushtaq
Yeah, we should talk again.

00:18.58
For the Record
that ah Awesome.

00:18.68
Mushtaq
Sure. Yeah, it seems perfect.

00:19.72
For the Record
um And I just copied your title from your email signature. So if you want to say that entire thing, great. If not, no biggie. um and But and then also, I guess, let's talk about what the title of this episode is.

00:34.11
Mushtaq
sure

00:34.31
For the Record
Tentatively is what the new Carnegie classifications mean for you. um I think is a general over like, OK, perfect.

00:40.48
Mushtaq
yeah seems perfect

00:43.01
For the Record
um So I'm going to be quiet. You read that. And then um i have a little bit like a, framing, and then I'll bring you in with, um I mean, it's a paragraph. It's not like forever.

00:57.33
For the Record
So I'll bring you in. I'll say, thank welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. i will wait. I will pause for you to acknowledge the welcome. That's always an awkward moment as we kick things off. So I will just be quiet until you're like, great to be here or whatever you say.

01:12.25
For the Record
um And then I'll ah prompt with some questions. So any any questions before we really kick things off?

01:16.31
Mushtaq
Okay, that sounds great.

01:20.42
Mushtaq
I don't think so. I think this will be great.

01:22.06
For the Record
Awesome. Fantastic. On to you.

01:25.32
Mushtaq
You're listening to For the Record, a registrar podcast sponsored by ACRO. I'm Wyshtak Ganja, Executive Director of the Carnegie Classification Systems and Senior Vice President of the American Council on Education. And this is what the new Carnegie Classifications mean for you.

01:42.10
For the Record
Hello, welcome to For the Record. I'm your host, Doug McKenna, University Registrar George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. George Mason is categorized as a Research One or an r one institution, which means that we award doctoral degrees and that there's a significant amount of research being conducted at our institution.

02:01.12
For the Record
But how did it receive that designation? Who defines significant amount and why are there categories in the first place? Today we're gonna be talking all about the Carnegie classification system, where it comes from, why it's used, why there are new classifications for the first time in a long time.

02:18.21
For the Record
And joining us is a special guest from the American Council on Education, or ACE, Mushtaq Gunja. Mushtaq, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

02:26.78
Mushtaq
Thanks for having me, Doug.

02:28.96
For the Record
So to kick us off a little, would you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what you do, maybe a little bit how you wound up working at ACE?

02:37.64
Mushtaq
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Doug. um It is a little bit of a weird and winding story. I'm a lawyer by training. um And I've been working in the Obama White House doing confirmation work, vetting work, that sort of thing.

02:51.97
Mushtaq
um And I met the person who was going to be in charge of higher education for the Obama administration, Ted Mitchell. um And he was looking for a chief of staff. I was working at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Baltimore at the time. I was looking for something a little bit different.

03:06.45
Mushtaq
And I had been teaching ah both at the law school level and at the undergrad level for a few years and was interested in doing something in higher education. He asked me to be his chief of staff, and I joined. So I was chief of staff in the undersecretary's office in the Obama administration's Department of Education from, i guess, 2014 to 16.

03:25.88
Mushtaq
um And a couple of years later, Ted became the president of the American Council on Education. yeah asked me to be his chief staff again, and I wanted to keep working on higher ed policy issues, so I did.

03:37.18
Mushtaq
And I was chief of staff here at ACE for goodness, about four years. In that um time, around early 2022, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was looking for a new home for the Carnegie classifications. So they'd been running this thing for 50 years, um and they were looking for a new partner to be able to help them put together these classifications.

03:59.04
Mushtaq
So I was so intrigued by the project and the process that I helped to bring ah the project over to ACE and we've been partnered with the foundation ah since early 2022 in this project.

04:12.11
Mushtaq
And I thought it was so interesting that I left the chief of staff job to run this thing full time, which is how I'm now the executive director of the the Carnegie Classification Systems.

04:20.69
For the Record
but That is an amazing story. Like I, I had no idea. couple of things you have said ACE e now twice. I said ACE, do you, does it, does the, is there one that is correct? ACE is the preferred sort of nomenclature.

04:38.57
Mushtaq
You know, like um in a world of picking pronouns, yes, I think A-C-E is is the preferred pronoun. um And, you know, it's easy to sort of see it as ace. But yeah, we typically say A-C-E.

04:49.09
For the Record
Right. ACE. Okay. I will say ACE e for the rest of ever. Um, and then second, this is the, when i talked to some people about the Carnegie unit, Carnegie unit, this is the differentiation. Like this is caramel or caramel. Do you say Carnegie or do you say Carnegie?

05:09.20
Mushtaq
I say Carnegie, I'm not sure that's quite right, but that's what I say. And i think that's, yeah. Totally.

05:14.83
For the Record
It's all it like a litmus test for people. So um since you mentioned the foundation, would you talk a little bit about what the foundation is, the Carnegie Foundation? And you also alluded to the fact that the classifications have been around for some 50 years since the early 70s, I believe.

05:31.36
Mushtaq
Yeah, that's right.

05:31.56
For the Record
that right?

05:32.62
Mushtaq
So the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been around for, think, more than 100 years. And they were really dedicated to studying and advancing teaching and learning and have been sort of in this space forever. They are indeed the sort of the creators of the Carnegie unit many, many, many generations ago. And that has lasted.

05:54.00
Mushtaq
And about 50 years ago, they helped create the Carnegie classifications. And what happened was Back in 1973, even a little bit before that, some folks were trying to make sense of what the higher ed landscape looked like. In a pre-internet age, it was a little bit difficult to know what was the right way to categorize and group institutions.

06:17.29
Mushtaq
um And so a set of institutional researchers decided that they should put together a classification system. um and so they did uh it was wildly successful um at grouping like institutions together and what they did was they grouped institutions primarily by the highest degree that they awarded so your institution would be a bachelor's institution if that was the highest degree that it awarded even if it awarded some associate's degrees and uh so on and so forth so um uh that

06:48.94
Mushtaq
sort of view of the world that sort of originated in 1973 has been around since. And it was the classifications that we inherited when when we started partnering with project in 2022. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had a new president that came on board shortly before 2022, Tim Knowles, who ah took a look at the classifications and along with my boss, Ted Mitchell here at ACE, sort of said, you know, this thing is um it' the gold standard of higher ed classification systems. You know, it's really the thing that people use.

07:22.38
Mushtaq
And maybe we should take a look at whether or not we continue to be sort of classifying institutions in the right way. I mean, the way higher ed has changed a lot in 50 years and the classification systems didn't change along with.

07:34.97
For the Record
Right.

07:35.05
Mushtaq
So they asked us to take a look at the systems and we started by sort of trying to understand what was the full sort of scope of the classifications, whether or not we were indeed grouping institutions correctly.

07:50.81
For the Record
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the new classifications. um You've previously previously said, with this redesign of the Carnegie classifications, we set out to measure what matters.

08:01.66
For the Record
What did you mean by that? And what changed as part of that evaluation of the higher ed landscape and the the way that the classifications unfolded?

08:12.63
Mushtaq
Yeah, it's great question. So the the classifications used to be sort of a singular classification. We called it the basic classification, as I said, grouping institutions by the highest degree they awarded. So George Mason, as you noted, was an R1 institution.

08:26.87
Mushtaq
The reason they are an R1 is because you are an R1, is because ah there are ah sufficient amount of doctoral production at your institution and sufficient amount of research expenditures.

08:37.97
Mushtaq
Wonderful. That R1-ness is the only thing that we told the world about George Mason. We didn't tell them anything else about the rest of the degrees that they offer, like the size of the institution.

08:49.67
Mushtaq
All we said was that you did a lot of research. It's fine, it's an important thing to be able to tell the world, but we thought that a classification system that was a little bit more multidimensional and that also centered students would be the right way to sort of be able to help the world think about our higher ed landscape when we're thinking about grouping like institutions together.

09:08.62
Mushtaq
So the new classifications come in three flavors. First, um we have a set of research activity designations. So this is the set of institutions out there that are doing research.

09:15.19
For the Record
right.

09:19.44
Mushtaq
We put them on a list of R1 institutions, R2 institutions, and then research college and universities. These are institutions that are doing large amounts of research, and we categorize them.

09:31.15
Mushtaq
And we've now taken that research work and taken it out of the base classification and are publishing sort of a separate list of those research institutions. wonderful want to make sure that the world knows about them but also want to make sure that the world knows the rest of the higher ed landscape as well so we undertook a redesign of the what we used to call the basic classification what we're now calling the institutional classification what we did there was we wanted to take again a more multi-dimensional 360 degree view of the institution we are now sorting institutions in this institutional classification by ah by size

10:08.46
Mushtaq
by the types of degrees they offer from an award level focus. So do you produce masters and undergraduate doctors? Where are most of your students? And then what are the subject matters that your institution is offering?

10:22.45
Mushtaq
So are you primarily nursing school or do you have more of a mixed focus? ah Those sorts of questions are what we ask and we put together a new set of groupings. So your institution may well be a large professions focused graduate undergraduate school.

10:39.93
Mushtaq
Not a very sexy name, but the but we think that it does a better job of sorting and grouping like institutions together.

10:41.32
For the Record
She, she, she, she, she.

10:47.85
Mushtaq
So there are 31 new classifications and some pretty huge move away from only sorting institutions by highest degree. We think that this institutional classification does a better job of grouping like things together.

11:04.51
Mushtaq
The third thing, the third classification, is a student access and earnings classification.

11:10.99
For the Record
This is the

11:11.21
Mushtaq
And when I said that students were nowhere to be found in the old classification, this is our attempt to be able to sort center students in one of the classifications. So we are now sorting institutions by how well they are doing at providing access to the geographies they serve to students, and then how well those students go on in the job market. So what are their earnings post-attendance?

11:34.39
Mushtaq
And so we've sorted institutions into higher access and lower access schools and higher earnings, medium earnings and low lower earnings schools. And ah you end up in one of sort of six boxes and every institution in this country that grants degrees and has sort of a sufficient number of undergraduates that for whom we have earnings data or access data um are in these one of these six boxes.

11:57.23
Mushtaq
And so we are hoping that third parties will use the full suite of classifications together sort of thinking about grouping like institutions. So it's good to know what an institution's institutional classification is.

12:10.49
Mushtaq
might be good to know what their access and earnings classification is. You might want to know what their research designation is, you know depending on who you are and what you're looking at.

12:15.86
For the Record
Right.

12:17.84
Mushtaq
ah So we're we hope that we've given the world a broader, more interesting way to be able to look at our 3,927 classified

12:27.38
For the Record
Give or take. Yeah, give or take.

12:28.51
Mushtaq
and like

12:29.37
For the Record
um And so if I'm an institution and I'm interested in figuring out what my new classification is, There is a site, the carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu.

12:42.12
For the Record
um I'll put the link to that page in the show notes. So if you're listening and are curious, go to the show notes. You can click on it and then search by your institution name. And so George Mason is now institutional classification mixed undergraduate, graduate doctorate, large.

12:57.49
For the Record
Our student access and earnings classification is opportunity colleges and universities, higher access, higher earnings, go us. And the research activity designation is research one, very high research spending and doctorate production.

13:12.18
For the Record
I can go through and look at any and all of the three, almost 4,000 institutions um using this lookup. how in, in practical terms, and I mean, you've alluded to how you would like people to use it, but in practical terms, how does someone translate this information into some kind of action and what action would you want them to translate it into as, you know, as a meaningful, I've interpreted this now I'm going to do something with it. What does that look like?

13:47.30
Mushtaq
What a wonderful question. So I think the place I might have, um, I might have you start is with the institutional classification page. um So you might want to sort institutions.

14:00.83
Mushtaq
You might want to look up your own institution and then see what are the other institutions that are in our group. And most of the groups have somewhere between 100 and 225 institutions with them.

14:13.42
Mushtaq
The reason that's a good place to start is because we hope that we've done a nice job of grouping peer institutions. once you've done that, then the world is your oyster in terms of what you might want to go um look up.

14:25.62
Mushtaq
But from an access and earnings classification point of view, if you wanted to see how well your institution is doing on either access or earnings, um it's really helpful to be able to look at that within institutional type so that you're not comparing George Mason to, um I don't know,

14:36.95
For the Record
Hmm.

14:42.02
For the Record
Berkeley college of music or yeah.

14:43.67
Mushtaq
Right, or Anne Arundel Community College, or NOVA.

14:45.59
For the Record
Right.

14:47.90
Mushtaq
Not because they aren't all wonderful institutions, they all are, but just they have a different focus, they have a different mission, they're organized in different ways. It's really important to try to um look at yourself in comparison with other with your peer institutions.

14:54.79
For the Record
Exactly.

15:00.40
Mushtaq
and from there We hope that a whole set of third parties, third party users will use it for all sorts of purposes. So first and foremost, the institutions themselves, you know, to the extent that you're an institution that for institutional benchmarking purposes, you want to know how well your institution is doing compared to others on earnings or on access or in types of degrees or, you know, we have this whole SIP code map of how many institutions are in the registrar's know this well, right?

15:27.61
Mushtaq
I mean, how many degrees are in history versus psychology?

15:28.07
For the Record
Yeah.

15:32.21
Mushtaq
You can do all of that work within the Carnegie classification. So it's perfect for benchmarking. And I think that the beauty of the new classifications is We give you the right way to benchmark.

15:42.55
Mushtaq
So you're not trying benchmark against all 3,927 institutions. We're giving what we hope is a decent peer group. And then if you want to change the peer group a little bit by looking at all the schools in the state, or you want to include a couple of others, we give you the tools to be able to do that as well.

15:57.09
For the Record
Yeah, so some aspirational schools where you're like, let's let's see what, you know.

16:02.69
Mushtaq
David Price- Absolutely mean really all of this is for the purpose of institutional improvement right. David Price- I mean institutions are constantly wanting to know how they can get a little bit better and we're hoping that these will be some Price- Those are some of the third party users, but there are all sorts of people who use Carnegie classifications for other reasons, too, so funders have used the the classifications to of understand.

16:22.94
Mushtaq
what's happening in the research space or in other spaces. And so again, being able to understand who's in who's in R2, who are these research colleges and universities, and then how are they doing on things like access and earnings?

16:35.66
Mushtaq
Like many of the third party funders have said, we'd love to be able to give funds, not just to folks that we've always given the funds to, but to a different, newer set of institutions.

16:44.03
For the Record
Interesting. Great.

16:45.60
Mushtaq
But who are those institutions and where are they on the landscape? We're hoping that these sets of tools will be help there. States often use Carnegie classification state systems to dole out sort state dollars.

17:00.21
Mushtaq
And so again, newer set of classifications, you might want to know how an institution is doing on either access or earnings when you're thinking about the dollars that your state system is giving.

17:10.95
Mushtaq
uh so we're hoping those sorts of tools will be useful here too so it sort of depends a little bit on where you are in the ecosystem right if you're nsf you might spend a little bit more time on the research activity designation you know if you're an accreditor you might be little bit more focused on some of the the access and earnings questions right and if you're an institution i mean you might be interested in all of it right to sort of know what your

17:20.28
For the Record
Right.

17:30.06
For the Record
The whole gamut. Yeah. You mentioned bringing students back in or bringing students into the way that the classifications work and sort of centering the student.

17:41.83
For the Record
Is this are the classifications meaningful for students? I'm from my own experience, I didn't know what a Carnegie classification was until I worked in a registrar's office. And so it seems difficult for me to imagine that we will have high school students looking at the classifications and saying, no i'm I'm going to do this one. i I just went through a college search with a high school senior and ah getting him to look at things beyond like, I need a football stadium and I need like, you know, an engineering school.

18:20.46
For the Record
Like those are, that was it. Um, How do we as higher education and how do you as ACE hope students or guidance counselors or people who interact with students, even high school students, how do you hope that they can use this information?

18:41.91
Mushtaq
Yeah, it's it's so um it's ah an important question and one that doesn't have a super easy answer because I think you're quite right that it's it's unlikely, I think, that in the first instance that your high school senior is likely to use the Carnegie Classification website as the place that they go to be able to determine which school they should go to.

19:02.36
For the Record
Oh,

19:03.92
Mushtaq
We don't think that that's probably quite right. That said, you know, I think there is a decent amount of useful information there. And as one thinks about peer institutions, one of things that's sort of interesting is that there are a whole set of institutions that show up as peers that are intuitive.

19:22.45
Mushtaq
And then often a couple of that show up as not as intuitive. So I have a high school junior as well, just met with the college guidance counselor.

19:26.87
For the Record
um nice.

19:30.90
Mushtaq
And I showed her the the the classification website and we hovered over a couple of the groups. And she said, this is really useful because it opens the aperture of my students. So I think he could, right? So they're interested in X college and that X college has a very nice access and earnings number.

19:47.30
Mushtaq
But look, there's another school that's like that's right next to it that has a very similar number and hasn't been on, like, isn't on the radar of many of the students in our school. This sort of shows that maybe it should be, and it gives us an ability to be able to open up a conversation about something else.

20:02.98
Mushtaq
So I'm hoping that over time that guidance counselors at least might start using it, if not the students themselves. Now, we did not design this website. at the moment to be used by students.

20:17.56
Mushtaq
That said, I think the goal over the next couple of years is to really think about whether there is a way to be able to design something that's more consumer facing using some data that's underneath. So we're hoping we'll get there.

20:28.47
Mushtaq
I don't think it's quite there yet, though. You never know what happens when you unlock bunch of data. You know, like it's possible that folks are going to be able use this. We're a public utility. This is all free data.

20:39.93
Mushtaq
People can use it in, you know, hopefully responsible ways, but, you know, certainly people can use this and we are hoping that many people will.

20:47.68
For the Record
Yeah, so let's talk, it's been a ah been a minute since the last time the classifications were updated. What is the idea now for sort of ongoing review or are these like the new, let's settle in and use these classifications for the next 20 years, 50 years?

21:09.56
For the Record
What's the idea behind the process um given how rapidly higher education has been changing over the last several years and looks to continue to um change. what what's the What's the plan for reviewing and and updating, keeping evergreen the classification system?

21:31.50
Mushtaq
Yeah, um it's a great observation, Doug. ah The classifications have been traditionally ah published every three years, and that's the plan going forward as well. So we published just last week, two weeks ago, spring 25, and our the plan is to publish again in spring 28.

21:48.87
Mushtaq
twenty eight So ah we will continue to sort see how the how the higher ed landscape evolves. I'm hoping we'll keep this methodology or something akin to this methodology for the next cycle too, because it's nice to be able to do some longitudinal work to be able see how the sector has evolved.

22:05.24
Mushtaq
But certainly as things change, you know we'll continue to take a fresh look at the the classifications.

22:05.41
For the Record
right

22:10.66
Mushtaq
But you should expect, your institutions should expect that theyll there will be another set of classifications to come out and in 2028. So stable for now um with a regular updating.

22:21.66
For the Record
Got it. And what happens if an institution disagrees with how they've been classified? Has that ever happened? Does that happen?

22:27.52
Mushtaq
David Myers, It does happen, you know, we, we did send institutions there sort of underlying data back in January of this year and. David Myers, Many the institutions sort of said actually this the this number that we had reported to scorecard or report to the to ipads isn't exactly right, and so you know had.

22:47.58
Mushtaq
David Myers, We heard some of that before, but after we published we you know there may be some institutions that are a little bit unhappy. David Myers, You know, and we have an appeals process it's on our there's an appeals form that's on our website carnegie classifications.acnet.edu as you noted earlier David Myers, You we'd be happy to hear from you, you know, there are when you put together one of these classifications there are.

23:09.41
Mushtaq
hundreds of methodological choices. So like, you know, one might in very good faith say, oh, I wish you had measured, you know, factor X in a different way than you did. think Price- know, lot time sort putting this together, I think we're unlikely to revisit the methodology, but there may be a way in which, like the methodology doesn't quite capture your institution we're happy to sort of.

23:31.06
Mushtaq
David Price- hear you out and no promises, of course, but you know we're happy to happy to sort of hear you out, so if somebody doesn't appreciate sort the where they are in the classification scheme, please reach out to Price- Of course.

23:42.49
For the Record
and Can we talk about the data for a second? where You mentioned like we you sent the data back to the schools. How did you gather the data initially? where and like What are all of the various data streams that feed into the methodology?

23:57.89
Mushtaq
So three main data streams, and I should say first and foremost, we collect no data ourselves. So um ah institutions don't report any data to the Carnegie classifications.

24:03.88
For the Record
Okay.

24:08.61
Mushtaq
All the data that we pull are from available um public third parties. so um are The biggest source of data is from IPEDS. um

24:17.10
For the Record
Got it. Huh.

24:17.36
Mushtaq
yeah The data that's collected by the Department of Education is data that the institutions themselves report straight to the department. The second source is the IRS college scorecard.

24:29.21
Mushtaq
So we pull earnings data from the scorecard. That's data that is of course collected by and through the Internal Revenue Service. And then third, we pulled bunch of data from the US Census.

24:43.69
Mushtaq
Because one of the things that we did was we made some geographic contextualizations when we were assessing how well institutions did on access and earnings. So, you know, some institution has a median earnings of $40,000, let's say.

24:58.81
Mushtaq
Is that good? Is that not good? Well, I mean, that completely depends on where your institution is located and where the students are coming from. So we needed to be able to get some earnings data and access data from the census.

25:13.63
Mushtaq
So we took both some micropedia, micro, microp, bleh.

25:22.43
Mushtaq
We took both some microdata and some metropolitan data from the census, some state level data as well, so that we could be able to do some good contextualization from where your students are coming from, so that we can answer that question of,

25:36.08
Mushtaq
Is $40,000, is it a good number?

25:38.14
For the Record
Good. Yeah. yeah

25:38.83
Mushtaq
Is not as good a number? And that, again, depends on whether you're sitting in the Rio Grande Valley or you're sitting in Manhattan, right? So we did that sort of work. Those the three big data sources, census, IRS, IPEDS.

25:50.92
For the Record
Right on. How many people were involved in this? Because you're you're talking about like a bunch of different data scientists and education ah policy people. And tell me about the sort of the makeup of the team.

26:05.30
For the Record
What is your I'm assuming it's your staff or because of your title, I'm assuming that you're responsible for the group that did this. So tell me about who's on the team.

26:14.57
Mushtaq
Yeah, so yeah. um So it's a set of, we've we've been partnering with the Carnegie Foundation, just the great folks there. And then we've got a small team here at ACE as well.

26:26.97
Mushtaq
My deputy, Sarah Gast, I have a chief data scientist, Kyle Whitman, couple of, and then the whole staff here at ACE has been giving us a whole set of feedback. But really, we designed this too with two main advisory groups.

26:41.32
Mushtaq
We'll put together a technical review panel So I think it's 16 or 18 folks that are economists, data scientists, folks that have been studying the higher ed sector and social and economic mobility in particular.

26:53.59
Mushtaq
And we met with them over the course three years. I think we met with them, goodness, 18 times, something like that over the course the three years. got a lot of feedback in putting this thing together. When I say we made hundreds of methodological choices, we did.

27:06.36
Mushtaq
And that wasn't me alone. mean, that is a group.

27:08.78
For the Record
Sure, sure. this like

27:09.58
Mushtaq
We also put together an institutional round table. This was a round table of presidents from across sort of the higher ed sector that also came together, I think about a dozen times to help, again, give us advice about the right ways to be able to put this thing together and especially help answer the question of what are the hidden incentives in the current system and how do you make sure that you're intentional about the incentive structure that you're putting together when you put together a new classification system?

27:29.21
For the Record
Right.

27:34.98
For the Record
Right. You want to avoid those unintended consequences that is a nudge in the wrong direction.

27:39.96
Mushtaq
Absolutely. You know, and it's easy to fall into those unintended consequences if you don't go in eyes wide open. So we really got a lot of advice from those two groups. And then lastly, um I've been on the road a lot over the last three years. So we've met with um the field as much as we could. i think we met in groups small and large with, I think, 13-ish thousand people over the course the last three years to get as much feedback as we could.

28:03.65
Mushtaq
tried to hit as many of the sectors as we as was possible. And you know that feedback was tremendously helpful too. you know We got feedback about zip codes. We got feedback about size.

28:13.94
Mushtaq
We got feedback about geography and the right contextualization. We got all sorts of feedback that really helped us design this. So this is a tool for the field. And I hope that the field sees themselves in the work too, because it's a project I think that's by the field as well.

28:29.86
For the Record
Yeah, it's remarkable work. And i appreciate you sharing sort of the scope and the number of people involved in their level of expertise. I think that helps people feel like, oh, this was a real thing. And like, they were very intentional about these things.

28:44.31
For the Record
um How has the reception of the new classifications been? What what feedback have you been? Have you been receiving post announcement and launch?

28:58.73
Mushtaq
Yeah, I mean, I think by and large, the reception has been pretty good. I mean, there are a couple of pieces of feedback that we ah that we've been really pleased to receive. I think folks have been excited about the transparency in the system. I think that by and large, most institutions are extremely excited by the centering of students, by the calling out of access and earnings.

29:25.58
Mushtaq
I think that reception has been

29:26.58
For the Record
Yep. Yeah.

29:27.71
Mushtaq
has been really good. I think change is hard. And for 50 years, institutions got a particular classification. They were master's large or baccalaureate arts and sciences.

29:39.10
Mushtaq
And to get now three different classifications with totally different words, with a set of peers that often will look familiar, but every once in while, there might be somebody who looks a little bit different and that might feel like it's in the wrong spot.

29:56.84
Mushtaq
uh you know i think that some of that is is well warranted sort of um not knowing where the methodology is coming from and so in that uh spirit we published a 16 page technical manual it's on the website under the resources tab of the website so please go look at the the full methodology if you want a little um light bedtime reading you know you'll understand what the map looks like how we put this to be

30:18.78
For the Record
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are some geeky people in registrar's offices, so i guarantee there will be more than one download of that based on what you just said.

30:28.96
Mushtaq
ye Well, hope so. Please take a look, you know, and it might help answer some questions. And certainly, I think we tried to keep it simple.

30:40.64
Mushtaq
We tried to keep it at the level of algebra and not calculus. And I think we mostly succeeded.

30:46.22
For the Record
Thank God.

30:48.41
Mushtaq
But, you know, we're classifying 3,927 institutions, which is a tricky thing to do because every institution is unique. You know, and truly every institution is an N of one, but you also need to put institutions a little bit together for purposes of benchmarking and other things.

31:06.20
Mushtaq
And so, you know, think in some ways institutions are always going to want to be with their aspirational peers and not necessarily with exactly who they are as they currently exist.

31:06.45
For the Record
Yeah.

31:17.42
Mushtaq
And so that's just a little bit of attention that one will feel.

31:20.63
For the Record
yeah Right on. I appreciate you sharing this so much. I find it fascinating and I've always really sort of enjoyed discussions about methodologies for how we're classifying things and how we're looking at the higher ed sector overall and how to make sense of it.

31:38.24
For the Record
So this is great that we're also pulling in the student as part of this overall effort to classify institutions. So thank you for being here.

31:49.16
For the Record
i appreciate you sharing your time and giving the explanation for the new classifications. It's wonderful.

31:55.91
Mushtaq
Well, thank you for the great questions. i really enjoyed this. and please do um download that methodology document, download the full data file, and any feedback would be would be much appreciated from you and and the very good people in the registrar's office. So thank you so much, Doug.

32:09.83
For the Record
Fantastic. Thanks very much. right. I'm going to stop recording, but don't go anywhere.

32:15.33
Mushtaq
Yeah. 
00:03.57
For the Record
Thanks very much to Mushtaq for sharing the behind-the-scenes information on the new Carnegie classifications. Click on the link in the show notes to look up your institution's new classifications, and feel free to download the paper explaining the methodology behind it all.

00:20.74
For the Record
And thanks very much to you for listening. I hope that you're doing your level best to nurture your sense of hope and that you are practicing gratitude and being gentle with yourself.

00:31.95
For the Record
It's a marathon, not a sprint. More than ever, it's important to reach out and build up your community. Make a commitment to do one thing, any one thing every week to make or build a connection.

00:46.72
For the Record
Write a letter, make a phone call, meet someone for coffee, visit a neighbor, There's a lot of bad out there right now, but there's a lot of good too. So shine a light.

01:06.14
For the Record
Until next time, drink some more water, stretch your legs, take care of yourself. I'm Doug McKenna, and this is For the Record.