Mission Driven Classification

Advantages of using Mission-Driven Classification (MDC)

The Carnegie Basic Classification is a “highest degree awarded” 3 x 5 scheme (public/private-non-profit/private-for-profit by Doctoral, Master’s, Baccalaureate, Baccalaureate Associate, & Associate). The MDC recognizes each public sector as commonly seen by practitioners, policymakers (states and federal level) and scholars. The MDC uses geography to (1) classify the 1,497 public institutions into three sectors (107 Flagship Universities, 439 Regional Universities, 951 Community Colleges) and 14 subtypes; (2) MDC uses institutional size, program offerings, and selectivity to classify the 1,819 private-non-profit institutions into 9 subtypes; and (3) program offerings to classify the 954 private-for-profits into 4 subtypes (four- and two-year general and special use institutions). The preliminary update of MDC’s public portion is presented on the pages below; the private sector is to be published in 8/23.

Principles of a Classification Scheme

  1. Completeness–It must include the entire universe (a virtue of Kerr’s Carnegie Basic).
  2. Accuracy–place institutions into the right groupings consistency (also in “old Carnegie”).
  3. Stability–institutions once grouped should not often move from sector to sector over time.
  4. Meaningfulness–create peer groupings as users actually see them.

Meaningfulness means utility to a diverse set of users simultaneously. In contrast, Carnegie, the backbone of US News & World Report rankings, assumes the public good of a for-profit four year university and that of a CSU-Long Beach or University of Alabama are equal. As Katsinas, Bray, and Kanter describe in Educating the Top 100 Percent, Policy Pathways for Public Higher Education (2022), America’s public higher education story has to be told simultaneously to state and federal audiences.

Geography Underpins Meaningfulness

MDC incorporates geography which heavily influences where most institutions obtain their students AND how they are financially supported. In the case of public institutions, the nation’s 107 Flagship Universities have assigned statewide or regional missions, while all 439 public Regional Universities serve regions (the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ “Stewardship of Place” initiative speaks to the commitment of Regional Universities to improve the economic and community development of their service regions. All 38 publicly-controlled Historically Black Colleges and Universities are classified among the 439 Regional Universities. State legislators and the Congress and elected by geographic districts, and state policymakers must consider their entire states for both operating budgets as well as need-based student aid.

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Brief History of MDC ​

Initial work on classifications began with funding from the Ford Foundation as it launched its $45 million Rural Community College Initiative demonstration program in 1994 (25 pilot community and tribal colleges serving persistent poverty rural counties in Appalachia, the Lower Mississippi Delta, the Southwest Four Corners, the Texas Border, and tribal regions of the High Plains). Ford saw invisibility of rural colleges in policy circles. Katsinas and Vincent Lacey developed a classification of the community college sector, advanced by David Hardy included in the 2005 and 2010 editions of the Carnegie Basic Classification for Associates Colleges (embedded in all federal IPEDS data sets). 1In 2016, Katsinas, Lacey, and Hardy added in the work of Louis Shedd, Nathaniel Bray, and Andrew Koricich to classify the other two sectors of public institutions (Flagship Universities and Regional Universities). 2Presently, Lacey, Hardy, Bray, and Koricich along with Noel E. Keeney and Patrick J. Kelly classified the private-non-profit and private-for-profit sectors as they update the public sectors. In Summer 2023, the Education Policy Center will be convening meetings to review the totality of the classification scheme.

  1. Geographic data for community colleges was used by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Thad Cochran to justify Sec. 6018 in the 2014 Agricultural Act (Farm Bill) requiring USDA-Rural Development to liaison with the nation’s 600 rural community and tribal colleges. ↩︎
  2. Data for the 3 public sectors were presented to members of Congress, including Senate Appropriations Chair Thad Cochran and his successor, Richard Shelby as part of the EPC’s effort to restore year-round (summer) Pell Grants, signed into law on May 4, 2017 by President Trump. ↩︎

The EPC staff is conducting free 1-hour zoom training sessions on using MDC and pulling IPEDS data for CSCC-members/graduate classes. Please contact Noel Keeney at nekeeney@crimson.ua.edu