Carnegie’s New Community Engagement Classification: Affirming Higher Education’s Role in Community

In 2005, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) stirred the higher education world with the announcement of a new classification for institutions that engage with community. The classification, community engagement, is the first in a set of planned classification schemes resulting from the foundation’s reexamination of the traditional Carnegie classification system. The new classifications are intended to provide flexibility, closer match of data with purpose, and a multidimensional approach for better representing institutional identity. The first of those new schemes, community engagement, has prompted a flurry of inquiry, self-assessment, documentation, and development of engagement practices as educators in colleges and universities strive to qualify for the classification.