Issue Briefs

About

For over five decades, federal law has guaranteed that students control their own personal and academic information. Under FERPA, institutions of higher education are subject to strict privacy requirements in their role as temporary custodians of student records, but it is students who generally determine what may be done with their personal information.

In recent years, one of the most significant challenges to student privacy has come in the form of various proposals to establish a federal student unit record data system (SURD) that would systematically collect personal data on individual students without their permission, posing a serious and substantial risk to student privacy. Although the Higher Education Act currently prohibits the creation of such a system, the ever-increasing demand for greater transparency and additional data on student outcomes has led many policymakers to advocate for overturning this ban.

NAICU, however, has opposed the creation of a student unit record data system due to the belief that the benefits of such a system do not outweigh the risks to student privacy.

Federal Activities

Education privacy-related bills are routinely introduced in Congress. Some of these measures would loosen current restrictions on the availability of student information in order to track and evaluate student outcomes, while others would tighten them to offer greater parental control and curtail commercial use of student information. Many of these proposals would address data security issues as well.

The two most prominent bills that seek to gather increased data on students are the College Transparency Act and the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, both of which have been introduced in each new congressional session over the past decade. Both bills have bipartisan support, but advocates for increased student data collection have championed the former bill.

The original version of the College Transparency Act raised significant privacy concerns, as well as concerns about regulatory burden. More recent versions of the bill contain several important new privacy protections, including notice to students, an opportunity for students to inspect and correct their records, data minimization and security provisions, data retention and destruction protocols, and a requirement that data may be made available only for vetted research purposes. However, because the bill would both repeal the SURD ban and authorize the establishment of a federal student tracking system, NAICU cannot support it.

In contrast, the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act would explore using improved technology to gather – and protect – the information policymakers desire. Additionally, the proposed bill does not create a permanent federal data repository on each individual U.S. student. Although there are still many unanswered questions about the feasibility of the new technology and the federal and institutional capacity to implement the system envisioned by the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act, NAICU supports further exploration regarding the cost, effectiveness, and feasibility of this new approach. NAICU also believes the Act has the potential to solve the privacy issues that have been central to its concerns with previous proposals.