Thursday, August 03, 2006
The feds want to track students
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The U.S. secretary of education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education is recommending a significant and disturbing change in how the federal government gathers information from colleges and universities.
The commission’s proposal to create a “national student unit record tracking system” would require higher education institutions to submit personal data on individual students to the Department of Education. The rationale is that this system would offer a more precise way of measuring such factors as enrollment, retention, graduation rates, cost of tuition and financial assistance. According to the commission’s report, the system would be “a vital tool for accountability, policy-making and consumer choice.”
In reality, this proposal is a costly and unnecessary increase in bureaucratic red tape that threatens students’ right to privacy and the security of personal information.
I want to emphasize that Hollins University and other institutions of higher learning advocate the need for sharing information about the quality of the education we are providing and its cost. We strongly support the efforts that the federal government currently has in place to collect aggregate data.
As the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities notes, programs such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System “produce statistically accurate studies while ensuring that individual students’ academic and other records are not revealed to anyone other than the student or appropriate campus officials.”
At the same time, colleges and universities are highly accountable, complying with more than 200 federal laws and regulations and adhering to rigorous standards set by regional accrediting agencies. Hollins, for example, is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Duplicating these initiatives makes even less sense when you consider the cost that would be involved with instituting the student tracking system.
Rolf Wegenke, president of the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, reports estimates of up to $1 million per institution to make the modifications necessary for compliance. These dollars could be much better spent on campus resources, including financial aid, academic programs and services and facilities.
But the greatest problem with the student tracking system is its potential for compromise. The education commission’s vow to protect this registry from unauthorized access is unconvincing in light of a number of recent high-profile data thefts from universities and government agencies that had supposedly reliable safeguards in place.
Higher education institutions and organizations are not the only ones who have grave misgivings about the commission’s recommendations. The House of Representatives voted to prohibit a student data system when it passed the Higher Education Act last March.
A recent Ipsos Public Affairs poll found that more than 60 percent of Americans oppose a federal database of college students’ records. By a more than 2-to-1 margin, they believe enough information is already collected at the college and university level. Digging for more data, they feel, would be a breach of students’ privacy that could result in the misuse of their personal information.
This national survey also found that 60 percent of Americans believe that collecting individual student data is expensive, intrusive and does not address a pressing public policy issue.
With the Internet and other technological advances, today’s college students have access to a world of information inconceivable to previous generations. However, they must also navigate a virtual minefield of identity theft, fraud and other possible invasions of their personal privacy. The Department of Education does not need to compound these challenges with an ill-conceived, unproven plan to track student data.
