NPEC Ongoing Activities

State Postsecondary Education Consumer Website Pilot Project

Through this pilot project, NPEC is supporting three states (Florida, Kentucky, and Minnesota) in providing better and more easily accessible information for prospective students and their families, particularly for adults and other underserved populations. Project outcomes will include a new or upgraded user-friendly website for each state. The audiences for this project are students, parents, high school counselors, educators, institutions, other states, and other professionals interested in advancing the information provided to postsecondary education consumers. Project completion: Summer 2008.

The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP)

Working with NCES, NPEC is updating the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). The CIP is a taxonomic coding scheme of instructional programs that is intended to facilitate the organization, collection, and reporting of program completions data using classifications that capture the majority of reportable program completion activity. The CIP was first established in 1980 and was updated in 1985, 1990 and 2000. The outcomes of this project will include a process for updating the CIP on a biennial basis, an updated electronic version of the CIP, and a website that enables users to search for current and past CIP codes, to identify instructional programs that have been added, deleted or moved since the 2000 edition of the CIP, and to cross walk 2000 CIP Codes with 2009 CIP codes. The audiences for this project include postsecondary institutions, state and federal agencies, and federal data users. The 2000 CIP can be can accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2002165.

The NPEC/AIR 2008 Focused Grant Program

The National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC) and the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) have announced the fifth year of their joint Focused Grant Program. The program is designed to increase understanding and knowledge of a specific issue area critically important to the postsecondary education community. This year's topic is underserved and understudied postsecondary education students. In March 2008, NPEC and AIR awarded six research grants and three dissertation fellowships. Grant and fellowship recipients for 2008 can be found at the AIR web site.

What We Know About Successful Preparation for Postsecondary Education

NPEC has commissioned research to develop an inventory of key data-driven benchmarks that document the ways in which postsecondary preparation is defined, measured, and used to help prepare students for the transition from secondary to postsecondary education within the areas of academic preparation, financial awareness, and social-cultural awareness. The target audiences for this project include the federal government and states, as well as a broad range of K-12 and postsecondary administrators, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers charged with supporting successful postsecondary preparation for all students. Publication date: Summer 2008.