Future of the Carnegie Classifications to Be Explored at ACE2023
March 13, 2023

​The work underway to reimagine the Carnegie Classification system will be highlighted at ACE2023, ACE's Annual Meeting to be held April 13-15 in Washington, DC.

As part of the morning plenary session on April 15, sponsored by TIAA, Mushtaq Gunja, executive director of the Carnegie Classification systems, will moderate a discussion with ACE President Ted Mitchell; Maria Spies, co-CEO and co-founder of HolonIQ, a global education market intelligence platform; and Doug Lederman, editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed,  where they will discuss how the expanded Carnegie Classification categories will impact higher education and advance social and economic mobility.

In 2022, ACE partnered with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to work together to develop new and refined versions of the Classifications that better reflect the public purpose, mission, focus, and impact of higher education. The two organizations are collaborating on the next incarnation of the Carnegie Classifications, which will include a new classification that highlights how institutions support students' economic and social mobility, and for the first time, the Universal and Elective Classifications have been brought together in a single organizational home at ACE. Teams of experts are also adding their perspectives to the work.

In addition to the plenary session, ACE2023 will feature four concurrent sessions that will examine different facets of the past, present, and future of the Carnegie Classification system:

Reimagining the Future of the Carnegie Classifications: 2023 Updates: Gunja and Sara Gast, deputy executive director of the Carnegie Classification systems, will provide an overview of the Classifications, reflections on the existing methodology and lessons learned, and next steps for releasing a draft framework for the 2024 Classifications.

The Future of Carnegie Electives: Marisol Morales, executive director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications, and Paul LeMahieu, senior vice president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, will offer background and insight on the new electives development process as well as provide a forum to announce the next set of electives offerings.

Internationalization of the Community Engagement Elective: Lauren Bartshe, associate director of the Carnegie Elective Classifications, will moderate a roundtable discussion with representatives from the U.S., Australian, and Canadian classifications on how nationally specific frameworks to assess community engagement enhance higher education institutions' ability to benchmark, incentivize, and achieve scaled impact.

Using the Carnegie Classifications to Highlight Institutions that Create Social and Economic Mobility: Kyle Whitman, Carnegie Classifications Technical Review Panel chair, will provide an overview of the concept for the Social and Economic Mobility Classification. Whitman will then moderate a discussion with panel members Desiree Zerquera and Michael Itzkowitz on the panel's work thus far.

Be sure to follow the session schedule for updates and announcements regarding these sessions and more.

In addition to a wide array of innovative concurrent sessions, ACE2023 plenaries will feature a number of speakers, including Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow at the Atwell Plenary. Opening Plenary participants include Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president emeritus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation; and Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, and Closing Plenary speakers include Jonathan R. Alger, president at James Madison University; and Clint Smith, staff writer at The Atlantic and New York Times bestselling author. The Opening Plenary and Atwell Plenary are generously sponsored by Fidelity Investments.

ACE2023 will bring together hundreds of presidents, senior executives, and other higher education leaders to learn the latest about nearly every facet of higher education. Be sure to register and save with advanced pricing , follow the schedule for updates and announcements, and keep up with conversations on Twitter using the hashtag #ACE2023DC.​