How does Bucknell get labeled as an LAC by the Carnegie Foundation when it has an Engineering College which offers 8 majors and a College of Management which offers 5 business majors? With an enrollment if 3600, it’s about twice the size of a typical LAC and closer to the size of a small research university like Brandeis.
Thoughts?
My guess is that Bucknell has few grad programs and emphasises undergrad studies.
Truth is, being called a LAC is just a classification. Anyone interested in Bucknell should do the reasearch to understand the college’s size, academic offerings, etc.
(Off topic but I always find it more surprising that the service academies are classified as LACs by USNWR.)
I agree, imho the service academies being classified as LACs is more surprising and even misleading.
I guess they don’t know where to put them, don’t want to rank them against each other, and landed on “~4,000+no/few grad programs=LAC, good enough”.
Btw, Usnwr could have a specific 900students and under category to shake things up 
I don’t think it’s an LAC but all the terms/descriptors are subjective anyway - and obviously US News thinks it’s an LAC - so therefore, I suppose to most people it is.
I think it’s a big LAC, but a LAC nonetheless, mainly because the vast majority of the emphasis is on undergrad teaching.
Also, it’s very rural, enhancing its LACness.
Bucknell was on our tour list and we considered it a small university, not an LAC.
I don’t think the Carnegie Classification really matters to many students when they are building a college list. Note also that the Carnegie Classification isn’t LAC, but Special Focus: Arts and Sciences, which is comprised of 221 colleges. Lafayette and Holy Cross are also in that same group as Bucknell, just to take two other examples that share many similarities. These three schools have [historically] had a far lower research budget as compared to Brandeis, to take OP’s example. Much of that is explained by the fact that Brandeis offers relatively more masters and PhD programs.
Agree
I have long thought that the term “liberal arts college” is imprecise.
In Canada they have a term “small primarily undergraduate university” which is a bit more of a mouthful, but is also perhaps a more accurate description of something that is at least similar. To me “small primarily undergraduate university” seems to be a pretty good description of Bucknell.
Wikipedia refers to Bucknell as a liberal arts college.
Regardless I think that a relatively small school can be a good place to get a bachelor’s degree, regardless of what you call it. In many or most cases I would expect a smaller school to have a smaller range of majors available, so a student does need to make sure that they are likely to have whatever major you want.
And I think that employers and graduate admissions know how good an education can be obtained at these smaller schools.
Two second google search results: Brandeis has over 1,600 grad students.
Bucknell has 49 grad students.
That is significant. Bucknell’s emphasis on undergrad education likely leads to its LAC classification.
Again, it is up to the individual to go beyond any simple classification to determine fit. Certainly Bucknell could appeal to a person interested in mid-sized universities and/or a person looking at LACs.
As noted previously, the Carnegie system actually has a lot of different classification options, today none of which share the labels the US News uses. US News instead lumps together various Carnegie classifications into its own buckets with its own labels and own history.
OK, so per Carnegie (2025), Bucknell is a Special Focus: Arts and Sciences college. What does that mean? Well, per the 2025 Technical Manual, it means this:
• Special Focus: Arts and Sciences
o This includes institutions that award at least 50% of their degrees in academic programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as generalized sciences. For more information, please see the 2025 CIP Code Map. These institutions are limited to only institutions whose Award Level Focus is baccalaureate.
OK, so what data did they look at? It is summarized here:
In terms of Award Level Focus, apparently 98.7% of Bucknell degrees awarded were Bachelor’s, 1.3% Masters. So that is indeed Baccalaureate-focused.
In terms of academic program mix for undergrad, 15.2% were Engineering and 12.8% Business stuff, which of course would not be true at “LACs” without Engineering or Business stuff. However, that still only adds up to 28%, so 72% was in other stuff. So apparently that means it had over the 50% necessary in HASS and generalized sciences to qualify as Special Focus: Arts and Sciences.
I think one of the lessons here is that basically, US colleges and universities can offer whatever they like at the undergrad level, and the possible mix they choose is not somehow dictated by the Carnegie system, US News buckets, or so on. The Carnegie system then tries to impose some sort of order onto the inherent chaos of the US higher education system, but as usual with such things, there are going to be all sorts of cases which are not typical for whatever classification that Carnegie put them in.
From a college choice perspective, then, what you really need to do is treat each institution as an individual, and determine if it makes sense for you as an individual in light of what it does or does not offer academically. At most, classifications like Carnegie might help you generate leads, but you should not at all feel bound to treat them as defining what makes sense for you as an individual. And that is all the more true with the US News buckets.
Oh, quick addition.
For practical reasons, a lot of Special Focus: Arts and Sciences colleges are on the smaller side. But that isn’t part of the actual definition. Nor is being a private college.
So UNC Asheville, for example, is also a Special Focus: Arts and Sciences college:
As is VMI (I just picked a couple pretty different sorts of examples):
If you search, apparently there are actually 42 total public colleges with this classification
Then in terms of size, Carnegie defines 4000 to 20000 students as “medium”. It looks like 21 total Special Focus: Arts and Sciences colleges were medium. The largest I found was Utah Tech, with over 14000 students:
You’re right. Bucknell does not have any graduate programs to speak of, but that’s not the point. There’s no argument that they are an undergraduate institution. The issue is whether they are special focus or mixed focus (Carnegie terms). Carnegie lists them as: “Special Focus: Arts & Sciences”. But that’s not an accurate description of what they do - not when their self-reported enrollment shows 37% of their students enrolled in engineering and business. That looks a lot more like mixed focus to me, not special focus. Carnegie is what USNWR and others use as the basis for their classifications.
What makes it all the more surprising is when I see other schools not categorized as LAC because they have education majors, for example, many of whom have a liberal arts & science major which they are preparing to teach.
The way the Carnegie (2025) system works, you just need 50%+ in the Special Focus area in question, which is defined by the 2025 CIP Code Map.
So less than 50% of awarded degrees (which is what they use) not in Arts and Sciences CIP codes does not preclude a college from having the necessary 50% in those CIP codes. Which was presumably true of Bucknell in the data they used for the 2025 classifications.
Something like this is “accurate” if the CIP code data they used was properly reported by the institution. Whether it is how any given individual would choose to define an Arts and College college for themselves is a different question.
I get it. I just don’t really put value on how various institutions determine college classifications. I’m a believer in doing the research to determine personal fit.
Yes, I understand, but as your numbers show the last get schools are atypical. I was only using size as one example of how they are dissimilar from typical LACs. The real issue is that they have major offerings in engineering and business, which is the opposite of what LACs do.
Again, just as an addendum, you can download the CIS CIP Code Map here:
One of the things I find interesting about that coding system is it distinguishes between what they called generalized sciences and specialized sciences. So a general Biology degree is given a Special Focus category of 1, which is Arts and Sciences. But a Biochemistry or Biophysics degree is given a Special Focus category of 2, which is Technology, Engineering, and Sciences, so also includes things like Bioengineering.
I am pointing this out because I am not sure that is always how people would think to draw that line. Including me. Like I would tend to think if all of general Biology and general Chemistry and general Physics were in Cat 1, why wouldn’t Biochem or Biophysics or Chemical Physics also be in Cat 1? But that is not the Carnegie way.
I don’t think the term LAC automatically precludes engineering/business offerings. Again, that goes to personal fit.
There are many LACs that offer business and/or engineering degrees…Union, Smith, Swat, Lake Forest College, Illinois Wesleyan, Trinity TX, Furman, Skidmore, Muhlenberg, Rhodes…I could go on and on. Some have had these offerings for decades. Signed, an accounting major who graduated from an LAC in the mid 80’s. My point in sharing this is that college categories have overlap and aren’t clear cut.
Yes, 28% of their degrees were awarded in engineering and business combined. I find this misleading. Engineering is a major which is notorious for its drop out rate. By Bucknell’s own numbers on their website, the number of students actually enrolled in business and engineering is higher than 28%. It’s 37%. Obviously not all of the engineering and business majors stay within those disciplines through to graduation.
I’m not sure about the word “opposite”, but ultimately I would agree that if you want a college where there specifically are NOT engineering and business undergrads, then you should not pick Bucknell.
And I am not being facetious, a given kid could rationally prefer a college community that was focused on like-minded kids. And if they didn’t see engineering and business undergrads as like-minded, then maybe they would not want to go to Bucknell.
On the other hand, a different kid could see it as a plus that engineering and business (and in fact possible combinations of those with each other or Arts and Sciences majors) were possible at Bucknell. But not so much that they would want to go to an engineering college like Olin, or business college like Babson. And they might still prefer an undergraduate-focused institution as well.
So Bucknell is going to appeal to kids when its particular combination of attributes is appealing. And not when not.
The labels Carnegie or US News uses don’t change any of that. But if the point is those labels are sometimes more misleading than helpful when truly trying to understand the colleges that might be the best fits for a given kid–absolutely, that can happen, quite commonly I would suggest.