The two-year college sector in U.S. higher education encompasses a great diversity of institutions. Yet the most widely used taxonomy of colleges and universities, the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, places all two-year colleges in a single undifferentiated category.
The intent of this volume is to advance the conversation among researchers and practitioners about possible approaches to classifying two-year colleges. This article discusses the purposes, possibilities, and pitfalls of classifying two-year colleges.
This article appeared in New Directions in Community Colleges: Classification Systems for Two-Year Colleges, vol. 2003, no. 122.