About FAEIS

What is FAEIS?

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/ethnicity. FAEIS also collects faculty counts and salaries by gender, race/ethnicity, and rank. Institutions with degree programs that fall within the FAEIS purview are required to submit their student and faculty data annually.

FAEIS is operated and funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Community and Education (USDA-NIFA-DOCE) and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech. 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.

FAEIS was developed by the USDA in 1983 and originally managed by Texas A&M University. Data collected at Texas A&M University from 1993-2000 are currently located at Research, Education, and Economics Information System. Virginia Tech began managing FAEIS in 2002.

For more information, check out our brochure and flyer.

Which institutions report to FAEIS?

FAEIS is designed to collect data from institutions offering degrees in the areas of life, food, veterinary, human, natural resource, and agricultural sciences. While there are a large number of institutions nationwide who offer degrees in these fields, the institutions reporting to FAEIS can be categorized as Land-Grant institutions (1862, 1890, 1994), members of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and members of Non-Land-Grant Agricultural and Renewable Resources Universities (NARRU). FAEIS works closely with partner organizations to expand the database to include other institutions in order to have the most complete set of national data for the disciplines in our program areas of interest.

What can FAEIS data be used for?

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.

Who uses FAEIS?

FAEIS data is used by a variety of organizations and individuals for presentations and publications, including:

The United States Department of Agriculture in responding to congressional inquires to support higher education and related USDA grants.
Higher education administrators for recruiting and bench-marking students, institutional planning, and regional and national comparisons.
University faculty and researchers for analytical presentations.
Industry professionals to judge the pipeline of students in specific fields.

FAEIS Regions Map

Below is a map of FAEIS defined regions: Northeast, North Central, West, and South. Included on the map are Land-Grant Institutions (1862, 1890, 1994) and Non-Land-Grant Agricultural and Natural Resources Universities (NARRU) institutions. Click on the “layer” button on the top left corner of the menu to choose what you see.

If you would like a custom chart, please contact us.