Format Student Data for the National Student Clearinghouse

Formats student records for submission to the National Student Clearinghouse. The package creates the required header, detail, and trailer rows and writes tab-delimited TXT and CSV files.

NSC

This is an R package for formatting student data for the National Student Clearinghouse. The package currently supports one function: format_data().

This package is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or officially connected with the National Student Clearinghouse.

It prepares a seven-column student dataset for submission by creating the NSC header, detail, and trailer rows, then writing tab-delimited TXT and CSV files. Always inspect the generated files before submitting them to the National Student Clearinghouse.

format_data()

Input

• Input must contain seven columns, in this order: first name, middle initial, last name, suffix, date of birth, search date, and requester-return identifier.
• The input may be a data frame or a headerless CSV, TXT, XLS, or XLSX file.
• File inputs are read as text so leading zeros are preserved.
• Birth dates are accepted in common formats, normalized internally to yyyy-mm-dd, and written to the output as yyyymmdd.
• In-memory school_code, branch_code, and requester-return identifiers must be character values. Zeros lost before the function receives a numeric value cannot be recovered.

Output

format_data() returns a 12-column data frame containing the NSC header, student detail rows, and trailer row. It also writes one .txt file and one .csv file to file_dir. Output filenames use the current date, query option, and suffix.

Important behavior

• Punctuation is removed from every input field, including identifiers. This can change identifiers that contain punctuation.
• Birth-date values that are not recognized are rejected.
• For query option CO, multiple search dates display a message and return NULL without creating output files; use SE for multiple search dates.
• The function does not yet validate column count, query-code values, code lengths, directory existence, or all search-date formats.
• Invalid dates can produce NA comparison errors. The current number of days from the search date and today's date must be at least 60 days. So, it gives a message if the length is 59 days or less.
• Blank names are removed, but whitespace-only names are not.
• Repeated calls using the same date, query code, and suffix overwrite files.

Example

students <- data.frame(
	first_name = "Jane",
	middle_initial = "Q",
	last_name = "Example",
	suffix = "",
	date_of_birth = "2000-01-01",
	search_date = "2020-01-01",
	requester_return_id = "0001",
	stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

formatted <- format_data(
	school_code = "001234",
	branch_code = "00",
	school_name = "Example College",
	file_creation_date = "20260907",
	query_option = "SE",
	file_dir = tempdir(),
	input_file_name = students,
	suffix = "example"
)

The school_code, branch_code, and requester-return identifier are quoted so leading zeros remain available to the function.

Citation

To obtain the APA-style citation for this package, run:

cite <- format(citation("NSC"), style = "text")
cat(gsub("_", "", cite, fixed = TRUE), "\n")

The console displays:

Klauth B (2026). NSC: Format Student Data for the National Student Clearinghouse. R package version 1.1.8.

Installation

In addition to CRAN, to install the package from GitHub, type the following:

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("Boklauth/NSC")

License

This package is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE and LICENSE.md.

Warranty Disclaimer

This package is provided free of charge and "as is," without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the author disclaims all express or implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. Users are responsible for evaluating the package, verifying its output, and determining whether it is suitable for their intended use. The author is not responsible for errors, omissions, data loss, or consequences resulting from the use of this package.