Classification of higher education institutions: qualitative content analysis

Aim – to identify criterions and parameters for classification of higher education institutions, using research method – qualitative content analysis. The following tasks are defined for reaching the aim: to conduct qualitative content analysis and define categories and their frequency; to describe and analyse defined categories; to compare different classifications of higher education institutions; to summarize the analysis results and draw conclusions. Research methodology – overview of literature and qualitative content analysis. Findings – qualitative content analysis helps to structure the information gathered, to select the relevant and applicable, and leads to the development of new categories; higher education institutions are classified in many ways, using different criterions and parameters; classifications made by individual researchers are available, as well as universally known and applied classifications of higher education institutions such as Carnegie Classification and European classification of higher education institutions. Research limitations – the classification of higher education institutions is analysed only from Europe and the United States of America.