The surprising persistence of Biglan's classification scheme

Within higher education systems, different institutions deliver different patterns of disciplines. A simple analysis of the structure of that pattern of disciplines across institutions in one higher education system uncovers a surprising relationship. That is, the key dimensions which describe that structure align nearly perfectly with dimensions discovered in a very different context: the Biglan classification scheme. This paper explains correspondence analysis as a mechanism for uncovering structure in simple contingency tables, shows the accuracy of the fit with Biglan's scheme and demonstrates that the analysis also has a measure of predictive validity in its ability to classify previously unclassified disciplines. The study not only acts as a more accurate validation of Biglan's scheme than those previously undertaken, but indicates that a scheme developed in the USA in the 1970s has current validity in a very different higher education system and suggests disciplines as a core genotype of institutions.