The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has released online a preview of its basic classifications, the system that has described and ordered colleges since the early 1970s.

The next Carnegie classifications of colleges, due in the spring of 2025, will label colleges by whether they’re low or high access, and whether students earn low or high incomes after they leave.

My 16-year-old son has a piece of paper, thumbtacked to his bedroom wall: a list of about 30 colleges and universities, carefully ordered alongside checkmarks and crosshatches. Upon first glance, the ...