Reporting by CIP Codes

Overview

The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) is a taxonomic coding scheme for secondary and postsecondary instructional programs. It is intended to facilitate the organization, collection, and reporting of program data using classifications that capture the majority of reportable data. The CIP is the accepted federal government statistical standard on instructional program classifications and is used in a variety of education information surveys and databases. This includes reporting to the federal government, the State of Indiana, and the National Student Clearinghouse. The CIP was originally developed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 1980, with revisions occurring in 1985, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. NCES makes updates and additions to CIP codes every ten years. The most current official CIP listing can be found on the NCES website: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode.

IU assigns CIP codes to IU academic programs, and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) is charged with approving all CIP assignments as well as maintaining the Academic Program Inventory (API) for Indiana public colleges and universities. The API has all approved degree- and certificate-seeking academic programs for public institutions in Indiana, and UIRR maintains a list of IU’s programs and their corresponding CIP codes on its website.¹

IU assigns four versions of CIP codes to students' programs of study. One version is called the IPEDS² CIP code. This version is used for all federal reporting purposes and is the primary CIP version used for most other reporting needs. The IPEDS CIP codes may classify some academic programs using a more general rather than a specific CIP code (when both are available from NCES). A second version is limited to CIP codes that the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (CHE) uses for reporting. A third version is for the federal database for international students called SEVIS³ , and it uses the most specific CIP code available to acknowledge international students' specific areas of study for international student services purposes.⁴ A fourth version is used for specialized needs where a more specific CIP code is needed for internal IU reporting, and this is called the Academic IU CIP code.

CIP codes have six-digits, and NCES publishes them in the form of xx.xxxx to identify instructional program specialties within educational institutions. (Note that in IU databases, CIP codes are stored as text fields without the decimal, e.g. xxxxxx, and they may have a leading zero.) The CIP taxonomy is organized on three levels, and IU uses two of these in reports: (1) a two-digit series (sometimes called a CIP family) that uses the first two digits of each CIP code, and (2) the full six-digit program level CIP code. The 2-digit series represent the most general groupings of related programs. A list of the two-digit CIP family descriptions is in the appendix below. The six-digit codes represent more granular instructional program categories. Here is an example of a CIP family and four sample CIP codes within this family:

CIP Family (two-digit): "16" "Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics"

CIP Codes (six-digit, four examples):
  "160102" "Linguistics"
  "160103" "Language Interpretation and Translation"
  "160301" "Chinese Language and Literature"
  "160302" "Japanese Language and Literature"

Also, IU academic programs may be moved from one CIP code to a new or more appropriate CIP code after they have been fully vetted and approved by campus committees, the Office of Online Education (if distance education or online collaborations programs are involved), and the IU Academic Leadership Council (ALC) Technical Review Committee.⁵ Since the assignment of CIP codes to IU programs changes over time, users need to understand how to report by CIP code.

Guide to Reporting by CIP Code

Reporting by CIP code at IU typically uses the most current list of CIP codes (e.g. the CIP taxonomy released in 2020), including for longitudinal reporting. This allows academic programs and their student metrics to be reported under one CIP code per program, rather than under a combination of historical CIP codes that were associated with that program.

To facilitate consistent reporting through the IU Data Warehouse, UIRR modified most CIP code field names in July 2020 to contain one of two technical abbreviations:

1. The CIP code fields that use the current CIP taxonomy have CUR in the field name (see examples below). These should be used for most reporting, and they match what is stored on the current effective-dated row of the academic plan table in the Student Information System (SIS).
2. In UIRR snapshot tables, historical values that were in place at the time of the data snapshot have HIST (or HST) in the field name. These are used for historical research and internal CIP code management by UIRR.

As mentioned in the overview, above, most reporting should use the current IPEDS CIP code fields. In some cases, users will see three codes for a student, which correspond to the student’s first, second, and third primary plans in their primary academic program for a term, institution, and career. Here are some examples:

• IPEDS_CIP_1_CUR_CD (use this for reporting in most cases)
• IPEDS_CIP_2_CUR_CD
• IPEDS_CIP_3_CUR_CD

Also, UIRR maintains a data table⁶ with academic plans and their current IPEDS CIP codes that are reported as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs to various agencies. IU staff can use this list of CIP codes in combination with any report in the IU Data Warehouse to identify STEM programs for a particular agency. Each agency defines STEM programs differently, so a single table indicates whether each plan and its IPEDS CIP code are categorized as a STEM program by each agency:

• LSAMP STEM Indicator: For the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Leadership and Academic Enhancement Program, named in honor of former congressman Louis Stokes. This is an NSF-funded program intended to support historically underrepresented students in the STEM fields. Currently four IU campuses participate in an LSAMP grant: Bloomington, IUPUI, Northwest, and South Bend.
• NSF STEM Indicator: For one of these National Science Foundation programs: NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Program (S-STEM) or STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP).
• CCA STEM Indicator: For Complete College America (CCA)
• OPT Homeland STEM Indicator: For reporting to the US Department of Homeland Security for international students on an F-1 visa who are seeking an Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa extension.
• ICHE High Impact STEM Indicator: For reporting STEM high-need/impact degrees to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) for the performance funding formula (PFF) for four-year public higher education institutions in Indiana.

Tables and Views

UIRR snapshot tables save historical data sets at particular points in time. As a result, these tables include the historical CIP code values at the time of each snapshot, and in many cases, they also have fields with the current 2020 CIP code values. Here are two examples:

Most other tables and views in the IU Data Warehouse (IUIE) only have the current 2020 CIP code values. Here are two examples:

UIRR also maintains a historical, effective-dated list of IU academic plans and the various CIP codes associated with them since 2004.⁷ This table lists the historical CIP codes for each decennial CIP taxonomy (2000, 2010, 2020, etc.) in separate columns for historical research. Below is an example for the IU Kokomo plan “History & Political Science BA” (HIPOSBA1) in the “Humanities and Social Sciences Undergraduate” program (HSS1). Note that the headers indicate the terms in which those CIP codes were historically used.

The bold CIP code in the upper right is the current CIP value used in most reports, and it is displayed in fields like IPEDS_CIP_1_CUR_CD/DESC in the IUIE.

References

¹ See this website for a list of API programs and their CIP codes at IU: https://uirr.iu.edu/resources/acad-proginv/index.html
² IPEDS stands for the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The data that IU submits to IPEDS for all IU campuses are summarized by CIP code description as Programs/Majors on the federal College Navigator website: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
³ SEVIS stands for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, which is administered by the US Department of Homeland Security.
⁴ SEVIS CIP codes must be specific enough to indicate which students are in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, as defined by the US Department of Homeland Security. This is needed for international students on an F-1 visa who are seeking an Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa extension.
⁵ More information is available on this website: https://uaa.iu.edu/academic-affairs/approval-process/process/index.html
⁶ The table name in the IU Warehouse is DSS_RDS.IR_STEM_PLANS_T. It is published in the IUIE as well: Master Catalog > Student > Student Enrollment Services (SES) > Control Tables > Stem Plans . Note that the STEM indicators are also in the view SR_CIP2000_CUR_GT, which is described in the next footnote below.
⁷ The table name in the IU Warehouse is DSS_RDS.SR_CIP2000_GT, and starting in August 2020, the granularity was changed to institution, academic plan, and SIS effective date. It is published in the IUIE as well: Master Catalog > Student > Student Enrollment Services (SES) > Control Tables > CIP 2000 Table. A view that only shows the current effective-dated row from SR_CIP2000_GT, along with STEM indicators, is published as SR_CIP2000_CUR_GT: Master Catalog > Student > Student Enrollment Services (SES) > Control Tables > CIP 2000 Current Table.

Appendix: CIP 2020 Two-Digit "Family" Series