Frequently Asked Questions
Expand and collapse the questions below to learn more about FAEIS, the student surveys, and the faculty survey.
General
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FAEIS, the Food and Agricultural Education Information System, is a federally mandated survey that compiles nationwide higher education data for the life, food, veterinary, human, natural resource, and agricultural sciences. These data include student enrollment, degrees awarded, transfer, and placement at all degree levels by gender and race. This also includes faculty counts and salaries by gender, race, and rank. Institutions with degree programs that fall within the FAEIS purview are required to submit their student and faculty data annually.
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FAEIS is administered by and works in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Community and Education (USDA-NIFA-DOCE). FAEIS provides data to the USDA in response to congressional inquiries regarding higher education. The USDA provides guidance to FAEIS regarding what programs to collect and which institutions to survey.
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All land-grant institutions (1862, 1890, 1994), members of the members of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and members of Non-Land-Grant Agricultural and Natural Resources Universities (NARRU) are required to report data to FAEIS. In addition, public institutions that have a college of agriculture, a college of natural resources, and/or a college of family and consumer sciences should report that college’s data to FAEIS.
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A land-grant institution is an institution of higher education in the United States that received funding from the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and its expansion in 1994. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) provides a map of the land-grant colleges and universities.
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FAEIS is designed to collect data from institutions offering degrees in the areas of life, food, veterinary, human, natural resource, and agricultural sciences.
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Contributing data to FAEIS benefits the greater good of everyone in the field. FAEIS data is utilized by government officials, industry professionals, higher education administrations, university faculty, journalist, and the general public to gain a complete view of student enrollment in the disciplines of life, food, veterinary, human, natural resource, and agricultural sciences. FAEIS data is also used in congressional inquiries regarding higher education funding for these programs. Institutions that report data can view other institutions’ data to conduct comparison with their peer institutions.
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FAEIS has agreements with partner organizations regarding the submission of data. If your institution is a member of an any of those associations, your data must be submitted.
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FAEIS partners with various associations and organization), including the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), the National Association of University Forest Resource Program (NAUFRP), and the Non-Land-Grant Agriculture and Renewable Resources Universities (NARRU).
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The individual(s) responsible for completing the surveys will vary from institution to institution. Often it is a dean, assistant dean, associate dean, department head, administrative assistant, or institutional research staff member who completes the survey. If you are not sure who currently reports data for your institution, email faeis@vt.edu and we will let you know who we have listed as your survey responder.
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If you need a new account to gain access to the system, email faeis@vt.edu with your name, preferred email address, and the academic unit you are in at your college. We will create an account for you. Once the account has been created, you will be notified to set your password.
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Once you have an account and you have set your password., you can login to submit data.
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Once you are logged into the system, go to the surveys tab. There you can navigate which survey you want to complete and for which program. This video tutorial walks through the process of submitting data online. You can also read our online data entry instructions.
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In lieu of the online system, survey responders can submit an excel workbook or a data file, given that the data is broken down by all of the required variables.
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If you are logged into the system, you can view data that was submitted during previous years on your institutions Reports -> History by Survey Type page.
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FAEIS is your best source for getting the ‘big picture’ on what is happening with the student and faculty at institutions that offer programs that fall within the FAEIS purview. The data can be used for a variety of things, including:
- Exploring enrollment trends, emerging disciplines, student placement, and faculty salaries.
- Conducting comparisons with peer institutions.
- Discovering new and emerging disciplines in colleges similar to yours.
- Studying student data by academic area, institution, or even institutional memberships.
- Creating custom reports that you can use for reporting, planning, and proposals.
- Understanding how colleges and universities nationwide are structured and organized FAEIS is geared towards responding to requests for raw data. We do not generally offer data interpretation nor visualization services. It is the function of the data requester to consume the raw data in whichever way they choose. Please see our Statement of Understanding to learn about the nature of the data collected.
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You can email your data request to faeis@vt.edu. We will follow up with you if any clarification is needed. Most requests are processed within two weeks.
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Any institution, college, or instructional program that you deem equivalent to your institution, college, or instructional program can be included as a peer for quick comparison purposes.
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FAEIS adopts the term “minority” as defined by § 365(3) of the Higher Education Act (HEA) (20 U.S.C. § 1067k(3)). This definition is applied to the concept of underrepresented minority as a suggested subsample based on ethnicity. Since representation varies across institution and program, ethnicity included as underrepresented can be customized on your reports. To maintain consistent reporting, these codes are included as a filter across the reports on the “Use FAEIS Data” page.
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You can download all of the student data the FAEIS has, in addition to other data files, on the data center page.
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If you’d like to receive the FAEIS newsletter, please email faeis@vt.edu. We email out periodic newsletters that includes FAEIS news, deadline reminders, examples of how to use the data, and spotlights on different institutions. You can also view previous editions of the FAEIS newsletter.
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Student Surveys
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The detailed student survey is comprised of four surveys: enrollment, degrees awarded, transfer, and placement. It collects information for students enrolled in degree-seeking programs.
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You can find the data that needs to be reported to be FAEIS in different places. If you are not sure where to look, we recommend:
- Asking your college dean.
- Contacting your institutional research office.
- Using the dashboard or platform your institution uses for managing student data (ex: Navigate, CORE, DataCommons, Tableau, etc).
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Disaggregated data must be submitted to FAEIS. We will not accept overall totals. The student enrollment, degrees awarded, and transfer surveys requires that the headcounts be broken down by CIP Code , Program name, Degree Level, Gender, and Race/Ethnicity.
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Data submitted to FAEIS must be organized by degree program. A program is considered a degree seeking program if it results in a degree being awarded to the student. Degree seeking programs may be broken down into majors, options, or specializations.
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No, do not report data for certificate programs. Only report headcounts for programs that will result in a degree being awarded.
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CIP codes are a taxonomic scheme used to identify and track educational programs. They are defined by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). You can view the official list of CIP codes and definitions from NCES CIP website. This list is updated every ten years. All FAEIS reporting must be by 6-digit CIP code. CIP codes are also used by the Institutional Research office at your institution for submitting data to the U.S. Department of Education. The Institutional Research office at your institution would be the first place to seek help if you are not sure what CIP code you should report your programs under. You can view the most common FAEIS CIP Codes crosswalked by Program and Academic Area.
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If our system does not accurately reflect the degree-seeking programs (by major/option/specialization) that exist at your institution, the list must by updated. You can update the list of instructional programs on our website or you can email faeis@vt.edu the list of changes that need to be made and we will make it for you.
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Please classify each student’s race/ethnicity according to the following definitions:
- All Non-US Citizens – A person who is a non-resident alien in the United States. This also includes international students.
- American Indian or Alaskan Native– A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America, or who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition.
- Asian– A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia or the Indian Subcontinent. This includes people from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippine Islands, India and Vietnam.
- Black (non-Hispanic)– A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa (except those of Hispanic origin).
- Hispanic– A person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.
- Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander– A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii or other Pacific Islands.
- Two or More Races (Multiple Race/Ethnicity)– Individuals who identify with more than one race or more than one ethnicity.
- Unknown Ethnicity– Data not available, data missing, or student did not report.
- Unspecified Minority– Report minority students in this category if unable to separate minority students into ethnic breakdowns
- White (not-Hispanic)– A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East (except those of Hispanic origin).
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Data can be submitted online through our system, by completing an excel workbook version of the survey, or by submitting a data file.
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If you are not able to get student data broken down by gender and/or race/ethnicity, use the “Unknown” category to classify the gender and/or race/ethnicity.
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Masters degrees need to be reported as either Masters(thesis) or Masters(other). Masters(thesis) indicates that a formal thesis has to be written in order for the student to earn their degree. Masters(other) indicates that the program does not require a thesis – it might require passing a cumulative exam instead. If your institution does not track the difference between the two, report all of the masters students under Masters(thesis).
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The Degrees Awarded survey counts the total number of degrees that were awarded for programs that are in the FAEIS purview during the academic year (the 2020 Degrees Awarded survey would include all degrees that were awarded during the 2019-2020 academic year). All students who were awarded a degree (Associate, Baccalaureate, Masters, Doctoral) should be included. Please exclude students who were awarded certificates. Students must be reported under the program/major they were awarded. If the student double majored and earned two bachelors degrees, please only report them under their first major. If a student earned two degrees of different levels in the same academic year (ex: bachelors earned in the fall semester and masters earned in the spring semester), please report both degrees.
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The transfer survey is a count of all students who transferred from a two-year institution to a four-year institution into programs that are in the FAEIS purview during the Fall semester. The Transfer Survey is a subset of the Enrollment Survey. This should only include all students who transfer into a Baccalaureate program, not into another Associates degree program.
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No, you only have to complete one of the two placement surveys. You can choose which of the two surveys (sector or occupational group) to complete.
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Enter the student in the appropriate employment category since he has taken a job in the U.S. The “foreign” category is for students who plan to return to their country when they graduate.
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The system allows users to fill out surveys for a single unit or for multiple units. Therefore, each department can submit their own data or a single user can submit data for the entire college.
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When you press the “I am finished” button, it emails FAEIS to let us know that you have completed your surveys. If there are multiple survey responders at an institution, others users will still be able to log in and edit the surveys they are responsible for, whether they are within the same college or at a different college.
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Faculty Surveys
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The Faculty Survey asks for detailed information regarding faculty members in the college. This information is often used by institutions to compare their faculty to that of their peers. The data can be used by deans to see what their peers are doing when it comes to hiring and promotions.
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The faculty survey asks for the following information about each faculty member:
- Identification String– The program will automatically assign a unique identification number to each faculty member. You have the option of adding an identification string to relate the faculty data to your personnel records. Doing this will make it easier to complete the survey. This identification string is often the faculty members id number at the institution or their initials.
- Gender– Male, Female, Unknown.
- Race/Ethnicity– All Non-US Citizens, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black (non-Hispanic), Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Two or More Races, Unknown Ethnicity, Unspecified Minority, White (non-Hispanic).
- US. Citizen– Yes, No, Unknown.
- Birth Month– Month the individual was born.
- Birth Year– Year the individual was born.
- Average Monthly Salary– Calculate the monthly salary: (annual salary/months of appointment).
- Appointment Status– Full-time or Part-time.
- Employment Start Year– The year the faculty member was hired.
- Appointment Term– 1 to 12 months.
- Primary Discipline – The discipline by which you would identify a faculty member (ie Forestry). Recorded by CIP Code.
- College Administrator– Yes or No.
- Department Head– Yes or No.
- Tenure Track– Tenured, Tenure Track (Not Yet Tenured), Non-Tenured.
- Academic Rank– Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Instructor, Senior Lecturer, Lecturer, Extension Agent, Other Faculty (Visiting Professor, etc.),
- Highest Degree Received– Doctorate, Masters, Baccalaureate.
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If you are completing the faculty survey for the first time, email faeis@vt.edu so that they can mark your account as being a faculty survey responder. You will now have a faculty survey tab that will allow you to go in and report on your faculty. If you are replacing someone, the faculty information will be transferred from their account to your account, so you do not have to reenter all of the information. All you would have to do is update and verify the information. If it is the first time your institution is reporting faculty data, you will need report on each faculty member in the college.
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Data must be provided for every faculty member in the college. Please include all faculty, part-time and full-time, responsible for instruction (teaching), administration of instructional programs, research, or extension. Do not report personnel on leave without pay, adjunct status, clerical staff, or support staff.
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Yes, even if the faculty does not have a teaching appointment, include them in the survey. For example, if their appointment is 100% research and 0% instruction, you would still include them in the survey.
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The CIP Code designation is used to describe the primary discipline the faculty member is involved in.
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No, you do not need to calculate FTE for each individual faculty member. You do, however, need to report overall FTE for each appointment type (teaching, research, extension/outreach, administration, temporary leave/sabbatical, other) in the college.
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