Introduction to IPEDS
IPEDS—the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System—is the most comprehensive dataset available on higher education institutions in the United States. Because the federal government administers student financial aid programs, it can require all participating institutions to complete IPEDS surveys, resulting in broad and consistent data coverage. The IPEDS website introduces the data set through five distance learning modules, provides information on each IPEDS survey component, and offers tools for downloading and analyzing the data.
IPEDS & the NTRN Project
The IPEDS-related resources on the NTRN website focus on four key questions
How should we measure revenues—especially net tuition revenue—using IPEDS?
How should we measure prices using IPEDS?
How should we measure enrollment composition using IPEDS?
Each question above links to a post that provides detailed answers. These posts describe the specific measures that can be constructed using IPEDS data. You can download datasets containing those measures, along with the STATA code used to generate them.
These datasets differ from the raw data available on the IPEDS website. Multiple adjustments were made to account for complexities in the original data. The next sections introduce the most prominent complexities and explains the adjustments implemented.
Unit of Observation Challenge
One of the key complexities in working with IPEDS data is the unit of observation. Not all entries in the dataset represent the same type of entity:
Some observations reflect an entire higher education institution.
Others represent an individual campus within an institution.
A third group corresponds to the administrative offices of systems that oversee multiple institutions.
This variation can create a range challenges unless the IPEDS data are adjusted properly. A separate NTRN post explores this issue in more detail, outlining both the problems it poses and the adjustment methods that can be applied to standardize the data.
Different Accounting Standards
The IPEDS finance survey includes multiple reporting forms, because higher education institutions employ different accounting standards.
Nonprofit private institutions and a small number of public institutions employ the standards set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
The remaining public institutions follow the guidance of the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).
These differences primarily affect how revenues are reported. Institutions using the FASB form assign revenue to 16 categories, while those using the GASB form use 18 categories. Fourteen of these categories share identical or nearly identical names across both forms. However, even categories with the same title can differ in meaning.
For example:
Both forms include categories for tuition and fees and federal government grants and contracts.
But Pell Grant dollars are reported under federal government grants and contracts for all GASB institutions, while most FASB institutions include them under tuition and fees.
FASB institutions also have more flexibility in their reporting, which means differences can exist even among institutions using the same standard.
In my research note, Measuring the Revenues of Higher Education Institutions Using IPEDS, I explore these differences in greater detail. I also provide formulas for constructing standardized revenue categories that work across both FASB and GASB institutions. For a list of those categories, see the IPEDS revenues post.
Addition, Deletion, or Alteration of Data Fields
The Department of Education provides a report detailing how the IPEDS Finance survey has evolved over time. Major changes around the turn of the century complicate longitudinal comparisons, which led the Delta Cost project to develop a Data Mapping File to aid researchers working with earlier data.
The NTRN project focuses on data from fiscal year 2004 onwards, so those major changes are not directly relevant.
That said, smaller changes in more recent years still require attention. These adjustments primarily stem from the phased introduction of new reporting forms—known as the aligned forms—during the late 2000s. These updates:
Made expenditure categories essentially identical across FASB and GASB institutions.
Disaggregated certain categories to allow for better comparability across institutions
A separate NTRN post describes these modifications in greater detail and outlines the adjustments needed to reconcile data from the aligned form with data from the previous version.