Carnegie Foundation Changes Classifications - What Will USNews Do?

Recently, the folks at the Carnegie Foundation changed their classification scheme for colleges. In general they've added more categories. Details are at:

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=807

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, USNews and other ranking lists do with this change. Indeed, part of the ranking game is figuring out (and possibly trying to change) how you are classified.

In another thread someone pointed out that Nova Southeastern is rated as a "1.7" (on a five point scale). Realize that NSU is listed in the "national university" list - I suspect one of the few DL focused school we talk about much here that is so classified. A 1.7 for NSU when viewed in a pool with Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan, etc. probably isn't unreasonable. If NSU were in a regional or masters category, they'd almost certainly rate higher.

So should NSU drop doctoral programs just to be rated higher? This may seem ridiculous given NSU's offerings. I know of some schools, however, that intentionally have not started low volume doctoral programs - just so that they don't get bumped into a tougher "league" and see their rating go down.

A crazy system, I suspect.

Regards - Andy

 

The rankings are based on opinion and are pretty arbitrary. I suspect that NSU suffers from a certain amount of bias from deans at "regular" institutions, especially since graduates of NSU probably do not have much of a faculty census at the national university level........

 

First of all, let me just say that I hope that NSU never considers dropping their PhD programs! It would certainly throw a kink into my future dreams of getting a PhD in Computer Science. I'm still not 100% decided on NSU (or even if I'm going to go for a PhD) but this is certainly a strong option since I don't have to quit my job.

As for the Carnegie classifications, does USN&WR really care? I haven't looked at the methodology their rating system uses but I doubt that most consumers really care. I've seen some schools tout their Carnegie classification, but until recently (your post made me curious) I never even knew what they really meant. I do think the Universities that are rated Level I Research institutions (or something like that) are really a cut above everyone else in terms of research funding, but in my opinion this doesn't mean much to most students and specifically DL students. Of course, if I'm looking to complete a traditional PhD this information could be important, but I suspect most students at this level already have a good understanding who the top players are. Do you have any thoughts as to how this might affect the USN&WR rating systems?

 

Hi Andy. Thanks for posting the news of the new Carnegie classificatons. It's certainly interesting.

I found some discussion of that on the Carnegie FAQ page:

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/about/sub.asp?key=18&subkey=405

They include this letter from USNews:

Robert Morse at U.S. News has provided this statement:

On November 17, 2005 the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching will announce publicly a new multi-dimensional classification system. Carnegie says they will also revise the "basic" current Carnegie Classifications in December 2005. The current Carnegie Classifications have been the basis of the U.S. News Best Colleges ranking categories since at least 1987. U.S. News will wait until after the December 2005 release of the revised "basic" current Carnegie Classifications to give our official reaction.

U.S. News is hopeful that we will be able to once again use the "revised basic" Classification to determine U.S. News ranking categories for the rankings that we will publish in August 2006, called the 2007 Edition of America's Best Colleges.

The revisions will surely result in some schools changing America's Best Colleges categories and some schools being ranked for the first time. These revised basic Carnegie Classifications will impact the America's Best Colleges rankings categories in calendar 2006. A school's new U.S. News category, if there are changes, will be reflected in the America's Best Colleges Peer Assessment surveys sent out around 4/1/2006.

The Carnegie Foundation also has this to say (highlighting by me):

A single classification cannot do justice to the complex nature of higher education today... Colleges and universities are complex organizations, and a single classification masks the range of ways they can resemble or differ from one another. As valuable as it has been, the basic framework has blind spots. For example, it says nothing about undergraduate education for institutions that award more than a minimum number of graduate degrees...

Another motivation for these changes has to do with the persistent confusion of classification and ranking. For years, both the Carnegie Foundation and others in the higher education community have been concerned about the extent to which the Carnegie Classification dominates considerations of institutional differences, and especially the extent to which it is misinterpreted as an assessment of quality, thereby establishing aspirational targets. This phenomenon has been most pronounced among doctorate-granting institutions, where it is not uncommon to find explicit strategic ambitions to "move up" the perceived hierarchy. By introducing a new set of classifications we hope to call attention to the range of ways that institutions resemble and differ from one another and also to deemphasize the improper use of the classification as informal quality touchstone.

 

I've wondered about that.

USNews classifies my San Francisco State as a western-masters school along with all of the California State Universities except San Diego State, which is called a 'national university-doctoral' because it hosts more joint-doctoral programs.

(Why do universities become 'national' when they offer more than x number of doctoral programs? Why do the doctoral programs justify more elaborate writeups in an undergraduate rankings book? Only the stars know...)

But whatever, I don't know of any reason to think that SFSU and SDSU aren't academically comparable. Well, in my 2003 ranking issue (the latest I have) SFSU got a 3.3 reputation score while SDSU got a 2.8. That suggests a 0.5 correction factor between the 'western masters' scores and the 'national-doctoral' scores.

(Actually, it might not be that easy, since the difference might not be linear. The gap might be bigger at the high end than at the low end, or vice-versa. Nor is it really clear that the correction factor would be the same for masters schools outside the west.)

Nevertheless, when I want to compare the USNews masters and doctoral reputation scores, I generally use that 0.5 factor as a rough rule-of-thumb.

Yep, you can say that again.

 

How do you decipher their system?

I was surprised to learn that Northcentral University only has 1400 students!!! If I'm going to graduate from NCU (someday), then I hope things work out for the long term!!! If you really think about it, starting a new university can be a daunting challenge. Not only do you need the initial capital investment to get things up and running, you also need an constant inflow of students for future revenue and to spread-the-word by word-of-mouth. Capella has something like 12,000 students, which was more than what I expected.