The Company Grinnell College Keeps: Our Peer Institutions

Maybe a parent once told you, “You are known by the company you keep!” Turns out, parents can be wise. Sometimes even institutions of higher learning benefit from such wisdom.

Similar to almost every college and university in the U.S., Grinnell College maintains a list of other schools it views as its peer group. This list can be mined for comparative information that can be helpful for data-driven decision-making purposes.

Grinnell has maintained such a list for decades. In the late-1980s the College had a “Peer 11” list. Sometime around 2013, that expanded to a “Peer 16” list.

The higher education landscape is always changing; maybe more so in the past few decades than ever (think for-profit universities, more complex government regulations, the pandemic, etc.). It follows that periodically assessing and sometimes revising one’s peer list — to account for new circumstances, changing demographics, and dynamic strategic plans — helps keep benchmarking data more relevant and actionable.

Recently, Grinnell’s senior leadership determined it was time to reassess the Peer 16 list. Executive Council, Staff Council, and Student Government Association were engaged in conversations to vet factors that would be the most relevant for setting the College’s peers. A robust set of admission, academic, finance, and profile/community size criteria resulted and were applied to 206 potential peer institutions. That process yielded a list of 23 colleges for peer consideration.

Leadership then charged the Office of Analytics and Institutional Research with a more thorough analysis of the colleges on the potential list, which included members of Grinnell’s previous peer group. Some serious number crunching ensued and helped validate that a list of 17 peer institutions could best do the intended job. The analysis results can be seen in an extensive set of charts, graphs, and tables on the Senior Leadership GrinnellShare site (College login required) in the Peer Group Selection report (pdf).

The refreshed peer group list maintains 12 and removes four of the previous 16 peers while adding five new colleges. The holdovers: Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, Davidson, Kenyon, Macalester, Oberlin, Pomona, Smith, St. Olaf, Swarthmore, and Vassar. The new additions: Colby, Hamilton, Haverford, Middlebury, and Skidmore. Being dropped: Colorado College, Reed, Washington and Lee University, and Williams.

The changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but the new peer list better aligns with Grinnell and helps affirm that the College is keeping good company.