The Curmudgeony Librarian writes “The privacy rights of students again became an issue, as an announcement of a proposed new government database was made this week. The government database would contain enrollment records on all college and university students. Currently, schools only provide individual student information to the federal government in connection with federally financed student aid. Students not receiving federal aid do not have to be reported. Overall, other school information such as enrollment, graduation, and costs are reported without identifying particular students. Under this new proposal, colleges and universities would have to provide the federal government with data on all students individually with their Social Security numbers.
The move was proposed as a means to better track education quality through more reliable statistics on graduation rates, transfers and other student information. The government asserts that the database is needed due to changes in secondary education trends. With a greater number of student transfers, and students taking longer than four year to complete a degree, the old methods do not yield significant data to hold schools accountable. The data would be kept by the National Center for Education Statistics. Several privacy organizations as well as the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities oppose the proposal.”
Some Self-Interest By Librarians in This…
For librarians, this could be an interesting long-term investment. Why? If this pans out as working as a means of tightening up the financial system supporting higher education so that it can turn such away from its current trend of being a money pit, that should produce savings in federal and state budgets. If so and the individual data is sanitized appropriately, budget resources should be freed up that libraries can go after.
As a profession we complain about a lack of funding. This may eventually prove to be a way to open up budgetary resources for us to fill in gaps. There appears to be sufficiently small cost to giving this a try.
Do we have the will to try being creative in this case?
Re:Some Self-Interest By Librarians in This…
I don’t think, for myself, the potential gain in budget savings is worth the invasion of privacy and the creation of a governmental database.
For smaller, public libraries, like mine, there probably wouldn’t be any significant money coming our direction. The bulk of our money does not come from Federal or State budgets, but comes from County and Municipal property taxes.
Other concerns…
From the article:
“A department overview of the proposal insisted that the data would not be shared with other agencies and that outsiders could not gain access. By law, the summary notes in capital letters, “Information about individuals may NEVER leave NCES,â€? the National Center for Education “Statistics.”
It’d be interesting to see if DoJ and the secret FISA court would interpret NCES’ or the individual college records as “business records” which could be obtained under Sec 215 of USAPA without a suspicion of personal wrongdoing.
Another issue worth thinking about is the level of detail that will be required in these enrollment records. If it’s just “Student X attends college Y”, that MIGHT be ok, depending on how well the data is protected. What happens if the gov’t is also demanding majors, or in a worst case a semester-by-semester listing of classes with professors? This data is already in any college registrar’s computers and would help NCES with accountability (Do some majors have higher dropout rate then others? Does taking a particular profess correlate to dropping out?, etc)
Employers would lobby heavily for access to this data, since it would make educational background checks incredibily easy.
If the same data was made available to Homeland Security, the FBI, Military Intelligence, or any other of the agencies keeping a closer eye on us, they could datamine these records against “terrorist” educational profiles and come up with a set of majors and/or profs whose students could come under greater scruntiny.
Overall, I think the risks of this initiative, as it’s currently framed and how it might be framed in the future, outweigh any educational savings we might get.
Also, the Feds will have to spend a lot of dough just keeping, analyzing, and backing up the data.
Re:Some Self-Interest By Librarians in This…
Alas, I often forget that Ohio’s system of funding is not replicated by other states (I spent enough time in Pennsylvania working on my master’s degree so I should know better). In Ohio public libraries typically receive 75-100% of their operating budgets from state government through what is called the LLGSF (Libraries & Local Government State Fund). State income tax dollars are funneled back to libraries statewide through a wealth redistribution basically. LSTA funds emanating from the federal government pass through state agencies typically before reaching public libraries. E-rate comes from the FCC (a federal agency) straight to libraries.
I often forget that not everybody funds libraries quite like the methodology in place in Ohio that puts tons of blame on Columbus no matter what happens. Thank you for correcting me.
Re:Other concerns…
Working in schools and summer camps in Ohio since I graduated high school, I frankly have been subjected to background checks by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation about five to six times already. The most recent check was when I applied for my substitute teacher’s license (strangely it allows me to work school media even though the bulk of my coursework was in cataloging and technical services). Prior checks were either for camp counselor jobs (which require fingerprinting and more) or for “operations” positions in my school district (even lunch room aides have to be fingerprinted). I doubt there is much that is not already in a file on me somewhere.
What would be a “terrorist” educational profile anyhow? Engineers? Businessmen? Doctors? How often do we forget that Osama bin Laden made a fortune in the construction industry and was an engineer before ever becoming a fighter? Considering the nature of the organization UBL has led, a “terrorist” educational profile would seemingly expand to cover almost anyone pursuing graduate studies. Those attacking the United States are not ignorant folks but often have significant amounts of education.
These are just a few thoughts I will throw out at this point.
It already exists…
Come on now think of everyone you know that went beyond High School. Now think of everyone you know who did NOT apply for financual aid. I´m sure Paris Hilton may not need it (although I´m fairly certain she is taking a pre-University break to travel)
So in reality this will affect about seventeen people. BFD. Now it is a stupid idea because it is a waste of money. Schools already report that sort of information to some agency let them amalgamate it from the states or the accrediting associations.
I don´t give a rat´s keester about the privacy aspect just don´t created another department of the bureau of redundancy and useless statistics, geez school costs enough as it is.