What are special-focus institutions and why are they grouped together in some classifications?
The Carnegie Classification has always identified institutions whose programs typically center on a single field of set of related fields (for example, seminaries, free-standing law or medical schools, schools of art, etc.). Among the new classifications, only the enrollment profile includes special-focus institutions because these institutions may be exclusively undergraduate, exclusively graduate, or they may enroll both undergraduates and graduate students. Special-focus institutions are inherently distinctive, and multiple classifications have less relevance for this group than they do for institutions offering a range of programs serving a variety of purposes. In effect, their specialized nature trumps the need for more elaborate classification.
