Jesuit Educational Association (JEA) records include correspondence, minutes, proceedings, reports, and surveys documenting the Association's work to ensure that Jesuit education in the United States met the highest national standards while also maintaining the core function of the religious formation of its students. They demonstrate JEA oversight of significant changes to the structure of Jesuit colleges and universities, through the move towards separate incorporation, reporting to boards rather than the Provinces of the American Assistency, and the introduction of lay faculty and administrators. Materials also document the changes in Jesuit secondary school education between the late 1930s to the late 1960s, with increasing focus on preparing students to go on to higher education.

These materials also document the work of JEA groups along regional, topical, or role divisions. Commission and committee records show the outcomes of those who worked throughout the year to forward the aims of the JEA within specific focus areas. The conferences and meetings records include JEA annual meetings that document the core decisions made in the JEA national meeting. They also include national JEA events dedicated to school presidents, deans, and student personnel administrators, as well as ones for Jesuit finance, engineering, law, and medicine programs. In addition to minutes and proceedings of the conferences, commissions, and committees, the records include longitudinal and special surveys performed for the committees and commissions, including standing high school and college surveys, plus surveys of Catholic formation of Jesuit high school students, public perceptions of Jesuit education, and historical shifts in Jesuit educational policy.

The bulk of the records were created by President Edward B. Rooney, SJ and Executive Secretary Paul Siegfried, SJ, or were their copies of the records of the commissions, committees, conferences, and regional divisions of the JEA.

The records also include the work of two prior initiatives, the Interprovince Committee on Studies (1921-1930) and the Jesuit Commission on Higher Studies (1931-1932), whose work led to the formation of the JEA.