Most realize that because of our location and cost, our primary competition for applications comes from publicly funded institutions. However, several different groups exist that are peers in operational philosophy and that share characteristics with us. These include national liberal arts colleges, United Methodist Church-affiliated colleges, and Old Dominion Athletic Conference colleges.
Each year, colleges submit comparison groups to the U.S. Department of Education for data analysis, effectively identifying institutions they see as their peers. These lists are usually not dominated by primary cross applications or even head-to-head competitors. Rather, most colleges select aspirational peers.
Mainstream higher education has recognized The Carnegie Classification™ (a.k.a. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education), as the leading framework for recognizing and describing institutional diversity in U.S. higher education for the past four decades. According to their website, starting in 1970, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education developed a classification of colleges and universities to support its program of research and policy analysis.
Derived from empirical data on colleges and universities, the Carnegie Classification was originally published in 1973, and subsequently updated approximately every five years to reflect changes among colleges and universities. In 2014, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching transferred responsibility for the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to Indiana University Bloomington's Center for Postsecondary Research.
This framework has been widely used in the study of higher education, both as a way to represent and control for institutional differences, and also in the design of research studies to ensure adequate representation of sampled institutions, students, or faculty. Also, according to their website, to ensure continuity of the classification framework and to allow comparison across years, the 2010 Classification update retains the same structure of six parallel classifications, initially adopted in 2005. They are as follows: Basic Classification (the traditional Carnegie Classification Framework), Undergraduate and Graduate Instructional Program classifications, Enrollment Profile and Undergraduate Profile classifications, and Size & Setting classification. These classifications provide different lenses through which to view U.S. colleges and universities, offering researchers greater analytic flexibility.
These classifications were updated using the most recent national data available as of 2010, and collectively they depict the most current landscape of U.S. colleges and universities. In addition to the all-inclusive classifications, the Carnegie Foundation also completed another round of its Elective Classification on Community Engagement. Unlike the all-inclusive classifications based on secondary analysis of existing national data, elective classifications rely on voluntary participation by institutions, permitting analysis of attributes that are not available in the national data.
Because of our extensive mission-driven commitment to community service and service learning and the outstanding work of Diane Hotaling (Director of Community Service), Dr. Kathy Stolley and Dr. Denise Wilkinson (the leaders of the initiation of our Center for Innovative Teaching and Engaged Learning), and Rev. Greg West (Chaplain), I think we would be wise to seek classification in the Community Engagement category.
I place a strong emphasis in data-driven decision making. When I arrived here, I asked three independent researchers to give us a better understanding of our peers and to look at 10 years of data for Virginia Wesleyan in determining our peer and aspirational peers. They not only reviewed data, but looked at mission and church affiliation. I then asked Don Stauffer, Senior Researcher and Policy Analyst, to do some additional research and refinement. He presented those results.
The institutions listed below were chosen through extensive analysis of schools with similar educational mission, resources, and a series of 25 "matching fit" characteristics. The goal was to build a benchmarking group of institutions comparable to Virginia Wesleyan in most aspects of the educational experience.
Selected Peer Groups of Virginia Wesleyan College
Peer Group
Albright College
Allegheny College
Austin College
Birmingham‐Southern College Birmingham, AL
Bridgewater College
Elizabethtown College
Hartwick College
Hood College
Illinois College
Juniata College
Lebanon Valley College Annville, PA
Lycoming College
Lynchburg College
Millsaps College
Moravian College
Muskingum University
Oglethorpe University
Presbyterian College
Randolph‐Macon College Ashland, VA
Roanoke College
Susquehanna University
West Virginia Wesleyan College Buckhannon, VW
Methodist Peer Group
Adrian College
Albright College
Allegheny College
Birmingham‐Southern College Birmingham, AL
Centenary College of Louisiana Shreveport, LA
Lebanon Valley College Annville, PA
Lycoming College
Millsaps College
North Carolina Wesleyan College Rocky Mount, NC
Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware, OH
Randolph‐Macon College Ashland, VA
West Virginia Wesleyan College Buckhannon, WV
I hope you find this information helpful as we continue to affirm our leadership and standing among top liberal arts colleges.
