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Researchers Call for New Carnegie Subcategories for Public Master’s Colleges

April 4, 2011, 2:02 pm

The nation’s 265 public colleges classified as master’s institutions should be further divided into geographical categories, which could bring greater precision to studies of their role in higher education, according to a paper to be presented this week at the American Educational Research Association meeting. A classification scheme could be modeled after the rubric for associate colleges developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which divides those institutions into urban, suburban, and rural subclassifications, say Stephen G. Katsinas of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and J. Clint Kinkead of Dalton State College. The two sectors have similar demographics—many minority and financially needy students—and aligning the categories between associate and public master’s institutions could help improve articulation agreements for transfers of college credits, the authors say. They note that growing numbers of students are enrolling in public master’s institutions, in part because of enrollment caps at public flagship institutions.

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  • hieddigger

    The Carnegie classification is used for a number of purposes in addition to Institutional Research. The USOED uses it for various eligibility purposes. It is used by States, legislatures, executive, and the feds for a criterion for cohort definition for financial and academic comparisons.

    Geographic information about an institution is readily available in the same sources that list Carnegie classification. With current database software, it is less than challenging to add the geographic, urbanity or rurality, and so forth information to a study.

    Let us not pander to the limitless demands of institutional researchers by changing a useful and well known classification system just so that institutional researchers can avoid a few minutes of extra effort. They will not be the ones disadvantaged by further subdividing of the master’s level institutions.

  • thinkingdeeply

    You are correct that geographic information is available; however, you have missed the point of this work. As I am sure that you know, Carnegie classified all Associate’s Colleges by geography in the 2005 Carnegie update. The work mentioned in this article is attempting to bring the same geographic system to the Master’s Colleges and Universities sector. If you read the methodology by which the Associate’s Colleges were classified, you would quickly realize that there is nothing elementary or “less than challenging” about the work. Also, I notice that Steve Katsinas is the co-author of this work—Katsinas was the principal author of the community college classification system as well. Given that Katsinas’ work with community colleges and community college classification was taken seriously by Carnegie in 2005, I imagine that Carnegie will be just as interested in this work.

    “They will not be the ones disadvantaged by further subdividing of the master’s level institutions.”—-Who is going to be disadvantaged?

  • pokebukola

    What a huge pity! I never encouraged parents to pamper their children to the extent of following them to the university. My parents never did and I learned to be independent. Surely the youngster can withstand the rigour of the stampede better than the mother. May her soul rest in peace. The child should strive to excel in school, when admitted, to show that the mother did not die in vain.

  • http://twitter.com/BrendaTNYC Brenda Tobias

    This is such a heartbreaking story.  With all sincere respect, I see this as an allegory for us.  Higher education is now accessible to the vast majority of our nation (no, not financially) and employment is nearly impossible without a college degree.  This is simply not sustainable.  I natter more here:http://heresheisboys.com/2012/01/11/a-higher-education-wake-up-call/

  • katisumas

    You don’t  understand.  They had to be with one parent in order to apply.  There was no pampering here. 

    The kid regardless of how well he did in his studies is not going to get accepted.  Haven’t you seen the figures?  

  • 22082270

    The ‘new’ South Africa, indeed.

  • tsylvain

    “As soon as they have children, the new graduates need to start saving for college costs.” 

    So true, but the problem is that student loan debt stretches for decades (thirty years in my case), and contributing to college saving programs, however important, isn’t possible given the required high loan payments.  This is another reason that the student loan problem needs to be seriously addressed:  the next generation of college-aged students will suffer from their parents’ high rates of indebtedness and will end up having to go into debt as well.  It’s time to break this cycle of debt.

  • bbr123

    Student loan is seen by many financial advisors as good debt
    and an investment in yourself. This is based upon the unwritten but formerly widely
    used social contract. This social document valued students who obtained a
    degree, provided them with a job, good pay, benefits and eventually a quality
    pension.

     

    When this social contract was cancelled then student loan
    debt became a questionable investment. Although this is true people still held
    onto hope. Without hope people have a hard time moving forward.

     

    So many middle aged people are going back to school and hoping
    it will benefit them in the future. This is the reason student loan debt has
    increased so much in the last few years.

     

    The jury is still out related to the enforcement of the
    social contract. So far no out of court settlement has been made and people are
    still making the investment in student loans and holding onto hope things will
    get better. The federal government is the student loan lender, the trial judge
    and they make up most of the jury. The court of public opinion and news
    coverage may have the last say.

  • annon1234

    1) Where’s the data to back up statements that conflict
    with data based research on the growing problem of student indebtedness?

     

    2) The
    problem is probably larger in some sectors of our student population than
    others, perhaps the authors don’t teach at schools that teach as many of these
    students? Perhaps they teach where parents foot most of the bill beyond
    financial aid, perhaps many of the students never even qualified for financial
    aid due to high family income so don’t need loans?

     

    3) While
    some students use student loans as “an alternative income stream” to
    quote an ex university president of mine, others use them to pay legitimate
    expenses and nothing more. And in looking at a student, they don’t come with a
    tag that says that bling was bought with student loans vs family vs a job I
    have… so how can they judge what is the case with the student?

     

    4) Related
    to #3, of course there is a problem with some students borrowing money just
    because they can, spend it on eating out and other things that are unnecessary
    and then graduating (if they graduate at all) and find that they actually have
    less disposable income as a working adult than they did as a student borrowing
    to the max.

     

    5) Certainly
    when your loans reach 100%+ of your anticipated annual income you are in
    trouble when it comes to repayment unless you spread it out over more years.
    But then the older student may well be making loan payments well into
    retirement. That will increase senior citizen poverty.

     

    6) There
    will be a dampening effect on the economy when students drowning in debt can’t
    afford to sped at the levels the economy demands in order to grow, stay out of recession…

     

    7) When you
    combine the problems of deferring gratification, easy access to loans, the
    desire for “stuff” and the late teenaged/early adulthood under developed
    frontal cortex of the brain (and the related difficulties of planning ahead, if
    won’t happen to me mentality that can exist with that age group) that is
    certainly a recipe for disaster with some students. I know in my classes, where
    it appropriately fits in, I discuss student loans, how it can have a life long
    impact on you if you (1) fail to repay them and/ or (b) borrow more than you
    can afford to pay. I have found that putting this in their own self-centered
    best interests (eg the negative impact defaulting or over borrowing will have
    on their ability to buy what they want in life later due to payments taking a
    big bite out of their income, or in the case of default inability to get a
    decent interest rate car or house loan, garnished wages and retirement social
    security, along with lost federal tax refunds, etc.)  gets at least some of them to listen. There has
    got to be a better way to do that though. If marketers can research how to entice
    us to buy almost against our will, surely they (and psychologists) can figure
    out how to make borrowing appear unattractive and unappealing.

     

    8) And yes
    we do have an obligation to try to talk a students out of loans they absolutely
    don’t need, however ALL of this does not negate that there is a growing
    problem, it is affecting a significant portion of our students (and I would
    imagine many/some of us who are reading this article, myself included) and
    there is fall out beyond the case of the individual student. In a society that buys
    into “every person for themselves; I’m in it for me; they made their own mess
    too bad for them; not my problem” mentality, I suppose ignoring the situation would
    be appropriate. I would hope we haven’t stooped that low. On the other hand, even
    for the self centered, this is the problem of all tax payers as much of the student
    debt is guaranteed and so it is our tax dollars that are used to pay back what
    is owed on loans that students default on. If for no other reason, we need to
    throw some brain power at how to fix the situation.

     

    9) And there
    needs to be a way that students with legitimate, on-going major catastrophes in
    their life can get out from under that debt load. It shouldn’t be easy, but it
    shouldn’t be as hard as it currently is either.

     

    10) From
    research based articles I have read this is a real, growing problem and not
    media hype as these authors suggest.

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