Higher Education Statistics from IPEDS

If you need data on higher education in the United States then you need to know about the IPEDS resource maintained by the Department of Education.

IPEDS – or the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System – is a FREE and extraordinarily rich source of statistical data available online.

The IPEDS program surveys over 6,700  postsecondary institutions annually – this includes every college, university, and vocational school that participates in the federal student financial aid programs.  Data is collected on several dozen variables, including:  institution size, academic calendar, admissions and enrollment, student demographic data, completion rates, degrees conferred, tuition rate,  financial aid, funding, institutional spending, retention and more.

IPEDS stores and archives vast amounts of data collected from these surveys online, and they offer a wide variety of tools to help researchers use the information.  Popular tools include:

• College Navigator – a very user-friendly search to help one pull up data on individual institutions or to compare data on two or more schools.
• IPEDS Data Center - a very complex data center that includes tools to create custom tables, track trends on specific variables, perform advanced statistical comparisons and more.
• IPEDS Tables Library – a resource for downloading pre-configured data tables for commonly used statistics.

You can start exploring IPEDS at their homepage.  If you want more information about the system, the “About IPEDS” page is a good place to start.

For help using any of the IPEDS tools, look for HELP links in the data exploration web pages.  You can also contact IPEDS support staff for more information.

Remember -please don’t use the comments field to ask a library research question — this will delay your response considerably. Use the Ask  A Librarian link at the top of  the right hand column.