IPEDS Reporting

Generate data for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) federal surveys.

Overview

IPEDS is the federal reporting system administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). All institutions that participate in federal student financial aid programs are required to submit IPEDS data annually.

The SIS does not submit to IPEDS. It produces the student-level rows and the summary counts that the Institutional Research office keys into, or uploads to, the IPEDS Data Center.

Surveys the SIS produces

The report (Reports > IPEDS Reports, REPORTS.IPEDS) has three tabs, one per survey component:

Survey	Run for	One row per
Fall Enrollment (EF)	A term	Student enrolled in the term
Completions (C)	An IPEDS award year	Conferred award (graduation record)
Graduation Rates (GR)	A federal cohort year	Member of a federal (FED-) cohort

Institutional Characteristics, 12-Month Enrollment, Student Financial Aid and Human Resources are not produced by the SIS.

The data comes from reporting views that migration 290 created: vw_ipeds_fall_enrollment, vw_ipeds_completions and vw_ipeds_graduation_rates, each with a _summary view. They are plain views, so there is nothing to refresh -- a report always reflects the data as it stands. A database that has not reached migration 290 shows "IPEDS reporting views not found" on every tab.

Institution-wide only

IPEDS counts the whole institution, so the report needs an unrestricted (ALL) grant on REPORTS.IPEDS. A grant scoped to a unit, advisees or own sections is refused.

Running a survey

1. Navigate to Reports > IPEDS Reports
2. Pick the tab for the survey
3. Pick what to run it for. The choices come from the data itself:
   • Fall Enrollment -- any term that has enrollments, newest first. The default is the most recent fall term that has started (the main fall term of the latest academic year, not a small parallel one). Any term can be chosen.
   • Completions -- the award years that have conferred awards.
   • Graduation Rates -- the federal cohort years on file.
4. Turn on Summary View for the counts IPEDS asks for, or leave it off for one row per student
5. Click Load Data, review, and Export CSV

Where each IPEDS dimension comes from

Dimension	Source
Residency	students.ipeds_residency_id, imported nightly from Colleague's declared alien status (PERSON.FPER_ALIEN_STATUS). Temporary-visa statuses (non-resident alien, student and religious visas) are U.S. Nonresident; resident aliens, asylees and DACA recipients are reported by race and ethnicity like citizens. A blank alien status means a citizen only when no foreign citizenship is on file; otherwise the student stays unknown. A missing value reads as Unknown
Race/ethnicity	One category per person, in IPEDS order: U.S. Nonresident first, then Hispanic or Latino, then Two or More Races, then the single race. Detailed subgroups (Filipino, Samoan, and so on) roll up to the five federal race categories. No race on file is Race/ethnicity unknown
Student type	Derived per term. A student is first-time or transfer only in the academic year their level started (a summer start shares the fall's academic year), and continuing after that. Which of the two comes from Colleague's admit status at the student's level: new freshman codes (and the master's code) are first-time, transfer codes are transfer, readmits are continuing. High-school students, students with no program and students on Colleague's non-degree (ND) programs are non-degree -- except CERT.* programs, which IPEDS counts as certificate-seeking
Full time / part time	The term's enrollment intensity from Colleague (the student load). Only where that is missing: attempted credits against 12 (undergraduate) or 8 (graduate) quarter units
Level	Graduate for the graduate level; undergraduate for undergraduate and high school
CIP code	majors.cip_code, from Colleague's program CIP. The nightly import also fills CIP, status, dates and department on majors it creates for programs the catalog import skips (every CERT.* program, and the MBA, MSN and MA.COMM variants)
Award year	The IPEDS award year runs July 1 to June 30 and is named by the year it ends in: 2024 is 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30. Only conferral dates up to today count
Program of an award	The graduation record's own major; for a record with none (about a fifth), the student's primary major at the time of graduation
Cohort year	The leading year of the federal cohort's name. Colleague names every federal cohort by its fall entry year ("2023-2024 FT Freshman"), and the cohort rows carry no start date of their own
Normal time	Four years to a bachelor's and two to an associate's, counted to the August 31 that ends the final year; 150% is six and three

Transfer-out is not available

Graduation Rates reports graduation within 100% and 150% of normal time. Transferred out is always empty: the SIS holds no transfer-out data.

Data Quality Checks

When any check finds a gap, the report shows a data-quality card listing the gaps in the data the views read. Each check counts students (or programs) and appears only when its count is above zero. "Recent" means enrolled in a term that started in the last two years -- the population the next submissions are built from.

Severity	Check	What to do
Critical	Open degree programs that have students but no CIP code (non-degree ND.* programs are exempt)	Completions is keyed on CIP. Correct the program in Colleague, or set the CIP on the major
High	Recent students with unknown IPEDS residency	Record the alien status in Colleague; it arrives with the next nightly import
High	Recent students with no admit status at their level	First-time/transfer cannot be decided, so they are counted as continuing
Medium	Recent term enrollments with neither a full-time/part-time load nor attempted credits	Check the term's enrollment data
Medium	Students missing gender

The panel used to show nothing for the CIP check because the check itself failed and the failure was hidden; a check that cannot run is now logged on the server rather than passing silently.

Sanitized databases

On a sanitized copy every person is given a gender of M or F, so the missing-gender count is always zero there. See Sanitizing the database.

Best Practices

• Generate reports early - Run IPEDS reports well before submission deadlines to allow time for data corrections
• Fix data at the source - Residency, admit status, load and CIP all come from Colleague; a correction made there arrives with the next nightly import
• Compare year-over-year - Review current data against prior year submissions for unexpected changes
• Document adjustments - Record any manual corrections made to generated data
• Coordinate with IR - Work with your Institutional Research office, who typically manages the IPEDS submission process