Insufficient data

Insufficient data (I/D) is CSEA’s confidentiality flag when a salary cell is too small to print. The floor is three reported salaries and at least 1% of seekers, whichever is greater. Miss either test and the school prints I/D or N/A, or rolls the people into Other. Headcount in that function or industry can still show.

How the floor is applied

Edition VII’s salary instructions (Table 4.A and 4.B–4.M) and the 12twenty implementation agree on the pair of tests. Some sentences say “1% of graduates accepting employment”; the worked examples and 12twenty use seekers. Use seekers, the stricter public reading, unless the school’s footnote says otherwise.

Worked examples from the Standard:

• 500 seekers; 1% = 5. Four people reported HR salary. Three-person test passes, 1% test fails. Print I/D / N/A for pay, or move them to Other. Fifteen people (3%) in consulting: print the mean and median.
• 90 seekers; 1% = 1. Three reported: both tests pass. Two reported: 1% passes, three-person test fails. Same choice: N/A pay or Other.

12twenty’s version: 100-person seeking class, two HR offers. Table 4.B shows I/D for Human Resources and puts those two in Other.

Schools may raise the floor. A 40-person class might refuse to print any cell under five people even if 1% is 0.4. All salaries still belong in the class-level Table 4.A total.

What I/D is not

Flag	Meaning
I/D or N/A on salary	Cell too small or too identifying
Other	Catch-all function/industry, including rolled-in small cells
No Recent Information	Graduate’s status unknown (Table 1.A), not a pay cell
Blank Scorecard earnings	Title IV privacy suppression, a different rule set

Example: PE shows 4 acceptances, 3 salaries, 200 seekers (1% = 2). Both tests pass, but two of the three salaries are $250k and one is $140k. The office can still suppress. CSEA invites that judgment.

Common errors

Reading I/D as “nobody got a job in that industry.” Printing a two-person median. Dropping suppressed salaries from the class mean. Using 1% of the whole class (including not-seeking) as the test. Treating N/A and Other as interchangeable without checking whether people were moved.

FAQ

Does I/D mean the function had zero hires?+

No. The acceptance count can still print. I/D is about pay confidentiality. Two people in HR who both accepted are 2/200 = 1% of seekers, but they fail the three-person salary test, so the salary line is I/D and they may be rolled into Other.

Why “whichever is greater”?+

On a 90-person seeking class, 1% is one person, so three is the binding rule. On a 500-person class, 1% is five, so three is not enough. Large programs would otherwise publish tiny, identifiable cells that technically had “three.”

Can a school hide a low-paying cell as I/D?+

They can raise the floor. They cannot drop those salaries from the overall Table 4.A mean and median. If the class mean exists, the suppressed numbers are inside it.

Is this the same as Scorecard’s privacy suppression?+

No. Scorecard suppresses field-of-study earnings for small Title IV completer cohorts using federal rules. CSEA I/D is a career-office rule on self-reported starting base. A program can have an I/D PE cell and a published Scorecard 52.02 earnings row, or the reverse.