Grantee Spotlight: American Council on Education (ACE)

ECMC Foundation granted funding to the American Council on Education (ACE) to work toward revising the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in ways that improve student completion rates and advance their social and economic mobility after graduation. ACE’s aim is not simply to update what is a familiar feature of American higher education but to restructure it in ways that improve outcomes for students by changing the incentives under which institutions are recognized and rewarded.

Funding from this grant is used to develop the social and economic mobility (SEM) indicator that will be used to classify all US colleges and universities, expand the Classification's website functionality, and develop crosswalks between the Classification system and other pertinent higher education databases (e.g., IPEDS).

Because of this work, new “access” and “earning” classifications may drive colleges and universities to become “opportunity colleges and universities” that prioritize the social and economic mobility of their students, a key part of our North Star goal.

This work is crucial in transforming the postsecondary ecosystem to be more focused on driving social and economic mobility. To read more about this work, check out our Chief of Staff, Stephen J. Handel’s article Recalibrating our Focus on Student Success: The Project to Revamp the Carnegie.