Santa Fe named among “Opportunity Colleges and Universities” - One of only two public colleges in Florida to earn new Carnegie Classification

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA (April 24, 2025) – Santa Fe College is one of only two Florida public colleges to earn a new designation for “Opportunity Colleges and Universities,” by the prestigious Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The other is Chipola College in Marianna. The designation recognizes the college’s accessibility and the higher earnings of graduates and former students.

 

The classifications were released today.

 

The Carnegie Foundation and the American Council on Education recently revised their designations, in what they refer to as “the year of significant updates.” This year they applied new core classifications based on an institution’s size and the degrees they most commonly award. The classifications also considered undergraduate student race/ethnicity data, Pell Grant recipient data, and how much students who attended make in the workforce compared to peers.

 

The new designations create multi-dimensional groupings of institutions that go beyond a single label. Those colleges whose data made them “higher access” and “higher earnings” received Carnegie’s designation for “Opportunity Colleges and Universities.”

 

“Santa Fe College is proud to receive our 2025 Carnegie Classification,” said President Paul Broadie II. “This reflects the result of our unwavering commitment to student success, access and economic mobility. Our very foundation is grounded on academic excellence, providing a culture of care for all students, and our focus on fulfilling our mission as a higher education institution. This prepares our students for success in the classroom, at their transfer institutions, and in the workplace.”

 

Broadie said student success in the workforce also is attributable to the close work the college does with advisory committees comprised of educators and industry professionals “who assist our academic programs in providing the state-of-the-art training that leads to higher wage careers that produce economic mobility for individuals and their families.

 

I applaud the work of all our employees that has resulted in this recognition and continues to transform lives.”

 

The Carnegie Classifications are the nation’s leading framework for categories describing colleges and universities in the United States and are frequently used for benchmarking by policymakers, funders and researchers. The Classifications are run by the American Council on Education (ACE), along with Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

 

Timothy Knowles, president of Carnegie Foundation, called the previous designations “incomplete measures.” The new designations “create a more robust picture of higher education across the U.S. and make visible those institutions that demonstrably accelerate educational and career opportunities for students.”

 

Ted Mitchell, president of ACE, told the Chronicle of Higher Education that in the old Carnegie Classifications, “you didn’t see the students. … We want to put students at the center of how institutions describe themselves and how others look at them.”

 

Designations had been largely unchanged since their creation in 1973 and focused on research and policy analysis, which Carnegie Classifications said may no longer reflect how colleges and universities operate today nor how they are used by policymakers. For details about the changes, read “Why 2025 is the Year of Significant Updates to the Carnegie Classifications.”

 

This fact sheet outlines the changes, data sources and methodology for the new designations.

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