The Colleges and Universities dataset is composed of any type of Post Secondary Education such as: colleges, universities, technical schools, trade schools, business schools, satellite (branch) campuses, etc. that grant First Professional, Associate, Bachelors, Masters, or Doctoral degrees.
Secondary education facilities, Administrative offices, or Post Secondary Education facilities that are non degree granting schools are intended to be excluded from this dataset, but a few may be included.
All data is non license restricted data that has been added from TGS research.
The text fields in this dataset have been set to all upper case to facilitate consistent database engine search results.
All diacritics (e.g. the German umlaut or the Spanish tilde) have been replaced with their closest equivalent English character to facilitate use with database systems that may not support diacritics.
The currentness of this dataset is indicated by the [CONTDATE] attribute. Based upon this attribute, the oldest record dates from 2007/07/03 and the newest record dates from 2007/10/12.
Use Cases: Use cases help define and clarify requirements, and describe how the data may be used.
1) Identification of populations that may need to be evacuated in the event of an emergency.
2) Notification of groups of people who may be at risk from a contagious disease outbreak.
ID Check: The [ID] attribute is not blank and all IDs are unique.
Coordinate Check: Coordinates are not null or zero and the x and y fields match the shape.
Basic Address Check: Physical addresses were verified to be non blank and to not be a "PO Box", "General Delivery", "Highway Contract", or "Rural Route" address.
Highway Address without Type Check: Physical addresses containing the word "Highway" or "Route" were verified to also contain a type designator such as "State", "US", or "County", if one actually exists for the highway or route. These type designators are often missing from addresses, leading to confusion if more than one "Highway" of the given number exists in an area.
Basic Name Check: Entity name is not blank, is not the same as entity city, and has a minimum of 2 characters. Name does not contain punctuation characters that can interfere with database operations, such as " (quote) and * (asterisk).
Basic Phone Check: All phone numbers (including the area code) are ten (10) numeric digits. Alphabetic characters have been converted to the corresponding numeric digit.
City Check: Entity city is not blank and is found in the named places file within 25 miles.
County FIPS to State Compare Check: The county represented by the tabular FIPS Code attribute is actually in the state specified by the state attribute.
County Name to State Compare Check: The county represented by the tabular county name attribute is actually in the state specified by the state attribute.
Phone Number Format Check: Phone numbers (including area code) were verified to be formatted as nnn-nnn-nnnn.
NPA_NXX Check: Area codes (sometimes called "Number Planning Areas", or NPA's) and central office codes (sometimes known as exchanges, or NXX's) were validated against data from the North American Number Planning Administration (NANPA). In some cases, NPA-NXX combinations did not show up in the NANPA data but were verified to work.
Area Code Distance Check: Area code (NPA) is valid and is within its area code boundary.
Zip Code Check: The zip code is five (5) or nine (9) numeric digits, is listed in the postal database, is in the same state as indicated by the entity's [STATE] attribute, and is not a PO Box only zip code.
Zip City Check: The entity's zip code and its city were verified to match according to the USPS Address Information System (AIS).
Collocation Check: Entities with different addresses must not share the exact same geospatial location.
Geographic Spell Check: Words that appear in the entity name were checked against a standard English word list (and Spanish word list for entities in Puerto Rico). Words not appearing in these standard word lists were then checked against names appearing in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) of geographic features that are located within 25 miles of the entity. Proper names were manually reviewed for correct spelling.
The Colleges and Universities dataset is composed of any type of Post Secondary Education such as: colleges, universities, technical schools, trade schools, business schools, satellite (branch) campuses, etc. that grant First Professional, Associate, Bachelors, Masters, or Doctoral degrees.
Secondary education facilities, Administrative offices, or Post Secondary Education facilities that are non degree granting schools are intended to be excluded from this dataset, but a few may be included.
1) Verified name, physical address, and phone numbers by contacting the entity or an authority responsible for the entity.
2) Determined or verified the geospatial location for the entity through contact with entity or authority responsible for entity. Entities were asked to describe their geospatial location relative to land marks visible in ortho imagery.
3) All text fields were set to all upper case.
4) Leading and trailing spaces were trimmed from all text fields.
5) Non printable and diacritic characters were removed from all text fields.
The values for this attribution have not been verified by TGS.
The values for this attribution have not been verified by TGS.
Sometimes an entity may report a city that is not accepted by the USPS, and although TGS has tried to replace those cities with an acceptable alternative, some of them may remain in this dataset.
NAICS Descriptions (and NAICS Codes) have been assigned based upon the entity's primary function, regardless of the function that qualified it to be included in this dataset.