Carnegie “T1s” and “T2s”? (a.k.a. What You Measure is What You Get…)
Imagine the transformative effects of “T1” and “T2” classifications — powerful incentives for higher ed to value “Very High Teaching Effectiveness” and “High Teaching Effectiveness” as much as research. It’s not a new idea, as scholars from the University of Portland recently presented. And it came to mind again on learning that the Carnegie Classifications will now be managed by the American Council on Education.
Perhaps teaching will be part of the “new chapter in the evolution of higher education’s gold standard institutional classification system,” as Ted Mitchell, ACE’s president, said. It would certainly “paint a more three-dimensional and nuanced picture of institutional achievement,” and, I’d add, how institutions achieve those, er, achievements.
So, I’m intrigued by ACE’s news. It reminds me of the old adage that I first heard years ago from Camilla Benbow, Dean of Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education: “What you measure is what you get.” (As a psychometrician, she should know!)
The current system, first developed in the 1970s by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, designates which institutions are Doctoral Universities, which are Master’s Colleges and Universities, and others as Baccalaureate and Associate’s Colleges. More are classified as Special Focus Institutions and another set as Tribal Colleges and Universities. Within these categories are designations for “very high research activity” doctoral universities, (the “R1s”) or those with a “high level of activity” (the “R2s,” emphasis added). Master’s degree-granting institutions are “large,” “medium,” or “small.” Associate’s granting colleges are further designated in one of nine subcategories based on their mix of traditional or career and technical programs and if students typically transfer to another institution.
So far so good. In essence, it was a way to describe — not evaluate — “the institutional diversity in U.S. higher education,” based on input metrics like numbers of research papers published and research dollars received, school size, and the kinds of degrees awarded.
Yet over the years, these measurements used to classify higher ed became normative indicators of prestige. R2s want to become R1s. Master’s-granting institutions seek to increase their research activity, in a “mission creep” that psychologist Bruce B. Henderson and others have critiqued. What you measure is what you get. The ensuring, and potentially deleterious, effects fit a phenomenon described by economist Charles Goodhart: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Today these classifications are one of the most powerful incentives that keep higher ed, and its faculty, focused on research. Promotion and tenure are largely based on one’s research productivity and influence within one’s discipline. As a result, other valuable aims — like effective teaching — get short shrift. Faculty aren’t encouraged or rewarded to spend time strengthening their instruction. It’s a phenomenal misalignment, given how important teaching is to student success and equity, as forcefully expressed by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences through its Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, related papers, events, and interviews.
I see this disjuncture every day. At ACUE, we regularly sit with institutional leaders to find ways to strengthen formal and cultural incentives, as part of a holistic strategy, so that faculty can put greater energy into their teaching. Doing so unleashes a latent interest that many professors already share but are often discouraged to pursue. The result? Professors’ work is more rewarding, more students succeed, and institutional goals are advanced, as our studies show.
I suspect that ACE, along with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, have their work cut out. Hearing, heeding, and mediating the competing interests of its diverse membership is no enviable task. For example, elite R1 institutions likely have a vested interest in maintaining the prestige they enjoy from the current scheme. Their invitation-only membership to higher education’s venerable Association of American Universities is based on research productivity, with embarrassing consequences for institutions “sacked” from the club.
Alternatively, perhaps R1s will embrace changes, to be freed from a present tyranny that forces institutional leaders to spend resources in ways they know do not advance their full mission or higher education’s equity imperative. Nor should teaching and research be viewed in competition, as CIRTL’s Bob Mathieu has long advocated and as debunked by notable R1s including USM, UN-Reno, Purdue, and others. An external incentive that prioritizes teaching is likely just what all the ‘top’ schools need.
ACE and Carnegie also believe that “the time is right” for the classifications to consider the “the impact of individual colleges and universities,” on such measures as “success in fostering social and economic mobility for their students.” That would be a dramatic change — to classify schools by outcomes rather than inputs. It would reflect well on Cal State and CUNY campuses, HBCUs, and HSIs, but less so on the Ivy League.
The move could re-invigorate higher education’s self-conception as a ‘ladder’ (rather than a ‘sorter’) of opportunity given, at present, “the promise of social mobility through higher education is not being fulfilled,” writes the (unrelated) Carnegie Corporation of New York. But it warrants careful design. As ACUE’s review of the literature on motivation shows, distant outcomes that may seem hard to achieve can be demotivating, and even incentivize unwanted change, as compared to a mix of ambitious but achievable short- and long-term objectives, along a path of inputs and outcomes, measured by leading and lagging indicators. Surely, evidence-based and equity-promoting teaching deserves to be in this mix.
Might we find that John Jay College of Criminal Justice does a better job than Yale? Or that elite institutions start operating more like open-access publics? It sounds far-fetched. But perhaps that will turn out to be the point. What you measure is what you get.
(Disclosure: ACE is an investor in ACUE.)
