The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education selected Santa Fe College as one of two Florida public colleges to receive a new designation for “Opportunity Colleges and Universities.”

SF, along with Chipola College in Marianna, received the designation, which recognizes the college’s accessibility and higher earnings of graduates and former students. The classifications were announced on Thursday.  

According to an SF press release, the Carnegie Foundation and the American Council on Education recently revised their designations, in what they refer to as “the year of significant updates.” In 2025, they applied new core classifications based on an institution’s size and the degrees they most commonly award. The classifications considered Pell Grant recipient data, undergraduate student race/ethnicity data and how much students who attended make in the workforce compared to peers.

The new designations have created multi-dimensional groupings of colleges that go beyond a single label. Those institutions 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 SF President Paul Broadie II in the press release. “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 added that student success in the workforce is also attributable to the close work the college does with advisory committees that are 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.” 

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

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.