Classifying Organizational Forms in the Field of Higher Education

Author/s: 
Martin Ruef, Manish Nag
Year of publication: 
2011
Session topic: 
Conceptualizing the broad-access sector in the context of US higher education

In 1973, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) first published its basic classification of degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. Building on a long history of earlier efforts to survey and evaluate the diverse organizational forms in American higher education, a commission under the leadership of Clark Kerr sought to differentiate these institutions into five broad categories, as well as a number of more nuanced sub-categories (Carnegie Commission on Higher Education 1973). Kerr’s own philosophy, adopted from John F. Kennedy, was to create an “aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity” (Lagemann 1992: 230). Practically speaking, this meant that the classification offered by the commission would continue to distinguish the traditional “elite” universities, such as Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, and the like, while encouraging systemic expansion – and greater access – at lower levels of post-secondary education.

File/s: 
PDF icon Download