Association for Institutional Research
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#12Subject: 2001-2002 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and Beyond Prepared: July 2001 Summary In the 2001-2002 IPEDS collection year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will have three collection cycles: fall, winter and spring. NCES will continue to implement recommendations of the NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign (see AIR Alert #9 and updates: Redesign of IPEDS Surveys). IPEDS will collect several new items, revise others, and reinstate some items that had previously been collected but were not collected in 2000-2001. All new items will be optional in 2001-2002, and mandatory in 2002-2003. The changes will occur in several surveys: Institutional Characteristics, Completions, Fall Enrollment, Graduation Rate, Faculty Salaries, and Fall Staff. While a lack of funding precluded NCES from collecting employee data during the 2000-2001 IPEDS collection year, revised faculty salary and staff data will be collected in the 2001-2002 winter collection. An updated version of the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP-2000) will be released this fall. Final decisions are expected this fall regarding the new racial/ethnic categories for reporting IPEDS data. Current Status Process changes Hardware and software improvements are being made to enhance system performance. New architecture that will be in place for the winter 2001-2002 collection will allow one UserID and password for all three collections and locking by individual survey. Content changes With increased funding, NCES will reinstate certain Graduate Rate Survey (GRS) items, collect employee data, and implement several of the Taskforce’s recommendations. All new items will be optional in 2001-2002, and mandatory in 2002-2003. Institutional Characteristics Survey Check-off items will indicate whether the institution:
Institutions will report data on multiple majors by program, race/ethnicity, and gender. Note that this is different from students receiving two or more degrees. Detailed information on double/multiple majors by program, race/ethnicity, and gender are new, and therefore optional for the Fall 2001 IPEDS collection. These items will be mandatory in Fall 2002. Enrollment (fall and full year) Institutions will be able to report their enrollment data during the fall collection, although it is not required until the spring collection. In Part A, institutions will be asked to report the total number of full-time and part-time degree-seeking undergraduates by race/ethnicity and gender (sum of old Fall Enrollment Survey lines 01-06 and 15-20). Part B will collect age data for graduate and first-professional students as well as undergraduates. Part D will collect unduplicated full-year headcount by race/ethnicity and gender, for undergraduate, graduate and first-professional students. Part E (new) will collect the total number of undergraduates in the entering class. (This will make it possible to determine the percentage of the entering class represented by the GRS cohort.) In future years, the Fall Enrollment Survey will collect information on non-credit courses, including the number of courses and contact hours for workforce development, from two-year institutions for which non-credit instruction constitutes an important part of the institution's offerings (as determined by the institution). Graduation Rate Survey Four-year institutions will once again report completions within four years and five years, in addition to six years. The IPEDS system will generate and display 4-year and 5-year rates. Employees by Assigned Position IPEDS will include a new survey component that will allow institutions to classify all employees based on faculty status and assigned position (occupational category), both full- and part-time. Medical school employees will be collected separately (see AIR Alert #9-Update 8, Proposed Changes to IPEDS Staff and Salaries Surveys, published November 1999). This component was designed to uniquely classify each employee and to clarify which subset of employees should be reported in the Faculty Salaries and Fall Staff surveys. This is intended to provide more consistent information about employees across surveys. The occupational categories (assigned positions) are patterned after the Fall Staff (EEO6) Survey with one addition: other administrative. Faculty Salaries Part A of the Faculty Salaries Survey (salaries and tenure status) will collect the total number of full-time faculty and salary outlays by academic rank and contract length. Tenure status will not be collected. Information on tenure status will be included with Fall Staff. Part B (benefits) will remain the same. Fall Staff The information collected on the Fall Staff Survey will remain basically the same as previously collected, with the addition of the new assigned position (other administrative). The salary class intervals have been adjusted to reflect higher salaries. Part C (additional information on full-time employees) and Part E (contracted or donated services) will no longer be collected. A new part will be added in the future, to collect the number of employees who are teaching regardless of titles or funding source, by full-time or part-time employment status and faculty status. A new NPEC Working Group will meet late this summer to continue discussion of a possible faculty activity measure to be added to IPEDS. Finance Survey for Public Institutions The Finance Survey for public institutions using the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) accounting standards is being revised to reflect changes in reporting under the new GASB standards. IPEDS will phase in the new survey as follows: 2003 for public institutions with total annual revenues of $100 million or more; 2004 for institutions with total annual revenues of $10 million or more (but less than $100 million); 2005 for institutions with total annual revenue of less than $10 million. Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP-2000) An updated version of the CIP will be released this fall. The new CIP codes will be required beginning with the Fall 2004 Completions Survey (degrees/awards granted between July 1, 2003, and June 30, 2004). Changes include the addition of new programs, deletions of existing programs, changes in program descriptions, and modified program titles (see draft at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/whatsnew.html) Racial/Ethnic Categories Under an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directive issued in October 1997, all federal agencies must allow individuals to identify themselves with one or more than one racial/ethnic category (see AIR Alert #6, New Federal Standards for Racial and Ethnic Data Collection and Reporting, published April 1998). Federal government agencies must use a two-question format in collecting the information directly from individuals: first asking whether the individual is Hispanic or Latino or not Hispanic or Latino, and then asking separately, which of one or more racial categories should be used to classify the individual: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. The NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign recommended a set of 16 categories for aggregate reporting of racial/ethnic data including maximum counts of individuals with a particular racial/ethnic background. This recommendation was rejected by the inter-governmental agency committee charged with developing guidelines for aggregate federal reporting (see notice posted 11/05/99 at http://nces/ed.gov/ipeds/whatsnew.html). A decision is expected this fall on the IPEDS requirements for racial/ethnic reporting. NCES will have three years to implement the new requirements. Once these are issued, NCES will be required to use the new reporting categories as of January 2004; thus, the Fall 2004 collection of Enrollment and Completions data will reflect the new racial/ethnic format. On January 16, 2001, OMB announced the availability of "Provisional Guidance for the Implementation of the 1997 Standards for Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity" in a Federal Register notice, January 16, 2001, Part IX, pages 3829-3831 (notice available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/fedreg/index.html).The guidance is "provisional" because certain decisions will be made based on analyses of the Census 2000 data. The notice proposed 10 racial categories based on the most common multiple race combinations:
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requirements will apply to the collection, storage and retrieval, and aggregate reporting of employee data. The EEOC has the authority to mandate that institutions use the two-question format to collect the racial/ethnic information from their employees (some of whom are students), and to mandate that institutions re-survey their employees if the institution did not previously allow for the choice of more than one category (see pages 66-68 of the January 2001 OMB notice at http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/fedreg/index.html). The EEOC has not yet issued any guidance about whether they will exercise this authority. Implications for Institutions Individuals who supply IPEDS data should read and be familiar with the NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign Final Report. It is important that all relevant individuals at institutions be aware of the requirements for new data elements and changes in reporting formats. These changes may require some institutions to change their current practices. For example, institutions may need to revise processing systems that create extracts for institutional research offices to include additional data elements. If different offices prepare IPEDS reports, or parts of them, then institutions may want to consolidate reporting under a single office or have the offices more closely coordinate their efforts. New items should be discussed with the institution's information technology (IT) staff to decide on a strategy for submitting these data to the IPEDS Web-based system. Timeline August 1999 - NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign Final Report April 2000 - 2000-2001 Revised Data Collection Plan issued Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 - Two IPEDS data collections under new Web-based system Fall 2001 - Fall IPEDS Collection (open between September 5 and November 2, 2001): Institutional Characteristics and Completions required, Enrollment optional Winter 2001 - Winter IPEDS Data Collection (open between December 3, 2001 and Feb. 1, 2002): employee data, including Faculty Salaries and Fall Staff Spring 2002 - Spring IPEDS Data Collection (open between February 18 and April 19: Graduation Rate Survey, Finance, Student Financial Aid, and Enrollment required) Additional Resources Updates will be posted on the NCES Web site about the changes in IPEDS http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/webbase.html NCES Taskforce for IPEDS Redesign Final Report is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/whatsnew.html "Provisional Guidance for the Implementation of the 1997 Standards for Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity": See Data on Race and Ethnicity under Statistical Policy at http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/inforeg/index.html#SP Authors: Higher Education Data Policy Committee Coordinated by the Higher Education Data Policy Committee. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Association for Institutional Research. |