In 1985, the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) developed a taxonomic scheme to facilitate the organization’s collection and reporting of fields of study and program completions. The Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) titles and program descriptions are intended to be generic categories into which program completions data can be placed, not exact duplicates of a specific major or field of study titles used by individual institutions. The CIP codes are standard statistical coding tools that reflect current practice, and are not a prescriptive list of officially recognized or permitted programs. The CIP is the accepted federal government statistical standard on instructional program classifications and is used in a variety of education information surveys and databases. More germane to this policy, CIP codes are used by the Department of Homeland Security to grant STEM-OPT extensions for students on a standard F-1 visa; see Eligible CIP Codes for the STEM OPT Extension.