Accounting for diverse missions: can classification systems contribute to meaningful assessments of institutional perfor
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Accounting for diverse missions: can classification systems contribute to meaningful assessments of institutional performance? Victor M. H. Borden 1
& Alexander C. McCormick
1
Received: 14 May 2019 / Accepted: 26 July 2019/ # The European Higher Education Society 2019
Abstract Although they have been developed for a variety of purposes, classification systems for tertiary or postsecondary education institutions offer a foundation for recognizing diverse institutional missions in policy, research, and practice. Diverse missions, in turn, are important to achieving broad societal goals of educating an increasingly diverse array of learners, contributing to scientific, technological and professional development, and addressing increasingly complex social issues in an increasingly interconnected global community. After reviewing the purposes and consequences, intended and unintended, of several popular classifications, this article addresses the potential for current or future classification systems to promote and support institutional differentiation. Specifically, we consider how appropriately designed classifications can properly recognize mission differentiation and assess the future prospects for contextualizing performance and accountability assessments through the lens of classification. Keywords Institutional classification . Mission differentiation . Vertical differentiation . Horizontal differentiation . Institutional performance assessment
Modern higher education classification systems The recognition of different types of colleges and universities has been a particular hallmark of postsecondary education in the United States, where multiple public (state and the federal governments) and private (church and philanthropic organizations as well as for-profit enterprises) stakeholder groups shared responsibilities for developing and providing oversight for non-compulsory postsecondary education, guided by different agendas, desired functions, and, more broadly, market forces (Rhoades 1990; Thelin 2004; Wechsler et al. 2007). In the latter half of the twentieth Century, the individual and societal needs for postsecondary education in * Victor M. H. Borden [email protected]
1
Center for Postsecondary Research, School of Education, Indiana University Bloomington, 201 N. Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
Tertiary Education and Management
the U.S. increased and diversified parallel to population growth and diversification, and the shift of economic activity away from labor-intensive manufacturing and toward a technologically intensive knowledge- and human service based economy. In particular, higher education gained in value and importance as a key driver of the knowledge economy. At the same time, the ascendance of neoliberalism and the ‘new public management’ led to an increased emphasis on measured outputs, performance assessment, and a strong focus on return on investment (Harman 2007; Olssen and Peters 2007). The various kinds of classifications and typologies are summarized in Table 1 and describe
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