FPDS Query Library
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Is Educational Institution

Boolean or coded flag indicating whether the vendor entity associated with the award is an educational institution. In FPDS, this is a vendor line-of-business attribute recorded at the vendor site level, so it describes the contractor’s institutional type rather than the procurement action itself.

Family: Award
Category: Vendor Site Details
Data Type: boolean_or_code_flag
Semantic Type: flag
Mapping: flattened_fpds_xml_field
AI Confidence: high

Variable Overview

FPDS Query Variable
content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution
Title
Is Educational Institution
FPDS Path
award/vendor/vendorSiteDetails/vendorLineOfBusiness/isEducationalInstitution
Description
Boolean or coded flag indicating whether the vendor entity associated with the award is an educational institution. In FPDS, this is a vendor line-of-business attribute recorded at the vendor site level, so it describes the contractor’s institutional type rather than the procurement action itself.
Business Meaning
This field helps analysts segment awards to educational institutions for policy, socioeconomic, and market-structure analysis. It is useful when assessing how much federal spending flows to universities, colleges, and other education providers, and when reviewing obligations tied to research, grants-adjacent contracting, or specialized academic services.
Example Value
0
Observed Non-Null Count
111,509,025

FPDS Compare

FPDS Query Variable
content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution
FPDS XML Path
award/vendor/vendorSiteDetails/vendorLineOfBusiness/isEducationalInstitution
Mapping Type
flattened_fpds_xml_field
Comparison Summary
FPDS Query flattens the original nested FPDS XML path 'award/vendor/vendorSiteDetails/vendorLineOfBusiness/isEducationalInstitution' into the SQL-ready variable 'content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution'.

Use Cases

  • Dictionary lookup and field explanation
  • SQL filtering and grouping
  • Analytical reporting and reusable query building
  • Contractor profiling and competitor analysis

Common Usage

  • Filter awards to education-sector vendors
  • Measure obligations to educational institutions over time
  • Compare award patterns by vendor institutional type

Common Mistakes

  • Interpreting the flag as the type of procurement rather than the vendor classification
  • Assuming all non-1 values mean the same thing without checking for null, unknown, or alternate codes

Query Guidance

Use this field in WHERE clauses or CASE expressions to isolate educational-institution vendors, for example by filtering to the true/1 code after confirming the dataset’s actual encoding. When summarizing, group by the flag and inspect null handling explicitly so missing data is not conflated with a negative classification.

SQL Examples

Preview values

SELECT
    content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution AS is_educational_institution
FROM fpds.data
WHERE content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution IS NOT NULL
LIMIT 25

Flag distribution

SELECT
    content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution AS flag_value,
    count() AS record_count
FROM fpds.data
WHERE content__award__vendor__vendorSiteDetails__vendorLineOfBusiness__isEducationalInstitution IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY flag_value
ORDER BY record_count DESC

Each dictionary item includes SQL-ready examples generated alongside the variable metadata, allowing immediate use in FPDS Query for filtering, aggregation, and analysis.