• for complete instructions. Webthe common data set initiative is a collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and publishers as represented by the college board, peterson's,. The common data set represents an effort by the higher education community to provide the general public and publishers with data in a consistent and. Webthe cds is a set of standards and definitions of data items rather than a survey instrument or set of data represented in a database. Each of the higher education surveys. The common data set (cds) initiative is a collaborative effort among data providers in. Webthe items in this section correspond to data elements collected by the ipeds web‐based data collection system’s graduation rate survey (grs). For complete instructions and.