The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education is a framework for classifying colleges and universities in the United States. The framework primarily serves educational and research purposes, where it is often important to identify groups of roughly comparable institutions. The classification includes all accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States that are represented in the National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).
The Carnegie Classification was created by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (hereafter referred to as the Carnegie Foundation) in 1973. They issued reports in 1973, 1976, 1987, 1994, 2000, 2005, and 2010. To ensure continuity of the classification framework and to allow comparison across years, the 2010 Classification update retains the same structure of six parallel classifications, initially adopted in 2005. The 2005 report substantially reworked the classification system, based on data from the 2002–2003 and 2003–2004 school years.
On October 8, 2014, the Carnegie Foundation transferred responsibility for the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to the Center for Postsecondary Research of the Indiana University School of Education in Bloomington, Indiana. The classification will continue to retain the Carnegie name after the Center for Postsecondary Research takes over on January 1, 2015. The announcement of the change was included with a statement that new classifications are to be issued in January 2015.
Information used in these classifications comes primarily from IPEDS and the College Board. The Carnegie Foundation lists classifications for particular institutions on their Institution Lookup website.