CIP stands for Classification of Instructional Programs, a federal taxonomy of fields of study developed by the National Center for Education Statistics. The CIP Code reflects the student’s academic plan.

Interpretation / Usage Notes:

The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) provides a taxonomic scheme to support the accurate tracking, assessment and reporting of fields of study and program completion activity, such as enrollment and degrees conferred. CIP was originally developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 1980, and the most recent update of instructional program classifications and descriptions occurred in 2010.

More information is available at: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/

Potential Values:

A seven-character text string, in the form of two numeric digits, followed by a period, followed by four more numeric digits (##.####). The CIP code should have a valid entry in the PS_CIP_CODE_TBL table.

For example, the CIP code for Hospitality Administration/Management, General is 52.0901. The NCES documents all possible CIP codes on the following web page: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode

Source Description: CLASS_SUBJECT_CIP_CD field from REC_CLASS_DIM table.