Bush proposing data bank on all college students

[Moses]

washingtonpost.com
Alma Mater As Big Brother

By Katherine Haley Will

Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A15


A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students' Social Security numbers and other information about each individual -- including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received -- to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.

The government's plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students' privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.

Researchers at the Education Department say this mammoth project would give them better information on graduation rates and what students pay for college. Perhaps this would be interesting information to collect, but at what cost to individual privacy? At what cost in time and effort to the government and the educational institutions? As a college president who has spent her career in higher education, I know that a system is already in place to collect statistics. This system meets the government's need to inform public policy without intruding on students' privacy. Since 1992 every college or university whose students receive federal financial aid has been required to submit summary data on enrollment, student aid, graduation rates and other matters via the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

Under the proposal that will soon be submitted to Congress, instead of aggregate statistics, colleges and universities would be required to feed data on each student to the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics. Should an institution refuse, the government could take away federal grants, loans and work-study funds from every student at the college, a penalty that would fall on students in need while leaving more affluent students unaffected.

Such a proposal is unacceptable, and we should work hard to defeat it. The creation of a gigantic database containing educational records and other personal data on millions would be a costly and troubling assault on privacy. This information could all too easily be shared with other government agencies or even with the private sector.

The potential for abuse of power and violation of civil liberties is immense. The database would begin with 15 million-plus records of students in the first year and grow. These student records would be held by the federal government for at least the life of the student.

Collecting and compiling data for such a system would increase college and university costs for hardware, staffing and training. Such costs would join surging health care and energy expenses in pushing tuitions up. Federal officials have shown no compelling public policy need that outweighs Americans' basic expectations of privacy. The Education Department's proposal to gather unprecedented amounts of personal data on individual students is dangerous and poorly conceived. Congress must reject this measure.

The writer is president of Gettysburg College.

[Moses]

Thief Takes Laptop with Berkeley Data


SAN FRANCISCO, March 28 (AP) - A thief has stolen a laptop computer containing personal information about nearly 100,000 alumni, graduate students and past applicants at the University of California, Berkeley, university officials said Monday.

The incident is the latest in a string of security breakdowns that have illustrated society's growing vulnerability to identity theft.

University officials announced the theft under a state law requiring that consumers be notified whenever the confidentiality of their Social Security numbers or other private information has been breached. The computer was taken on March 11.

Notifying all of the 98,369 people affected by the Berkeley theft could prove difficult because some of the people received their degrees nearly 30 years ago, the officials said.

The university police suspect that the thief was more interested in swiping a computer than people's identities, a Berkeley spokeswoman, Maria Felde, said.

— Associated Press
New York Times
2005-03-29
www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/national/29data.html?

[Moses]

Plan to Gather Student Data Draws Fire

www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27privacy.html


By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: May 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 26 - As the Senate moves to complete the spending bill for the Higher Education Act next month, a growing number of organizations concerned about privacy rights are fighting a Department of Education plan that would require colleges and universities to place personal information on individual students into a national database maintained by the government.

If included in the spending measure, the plan would radically change current practice by requiring schools to provide personal information on all students, not just those receiving federal aid.

Submissions would include every student's name and Social Security number, along with sex; date of birth; home address; race; ethnicity; names of every college course begun and completed; attendance records; and financial aid information.

Such detailed information is now provided only for students receiving federal aid, giving the department only a partial picture of higher education nationwide. The new approach, department officials say, would not only complete the picture but also help track students who take uncommon paths toward a degree. [and eradicate them!]

"Forty percent of students now enroll in more than one institution at some point during their progress to a degree," said Grover Whitehurst, director of the department's Institute of Education Sciences, which devised the plan. "The only way to accurately account for students who stop out, drop out, graduate at a later date or transfer out is with a system that tracks individual students across and within post-secondary institutions."

It is not clear whether the proposal has enough momentum - or even a sponsor - to be added by the Senate. The House version did not include the plan, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, has spoken against it.

Concerned that the plan could emerge through the Senate, opponents are trying to kill it before it gains any traction.

"Our belief is that the department, itself, is both unconstitutional and a relic of the last century that should not exist, let alone create new databases," said Michael Ostrolenk, education policy director for two conservative groups, EdWatch and Eagle Forum. "I don't trust the government with databases with private information on citizens."

Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said: "Once a database is created for one purpose, regardless how genuine or legitimate it is, it's very, very hard to prevent it from being used for law enforcement or intelligence purposes. If the F.B.I. comes calling, it almost doesn't matter what the privacy policy is. They'll get the information they want."

Indeed, the feasibility report permits the attorney general and the Department of Justice to gain access to the database "in order to fight terrorism."[/color] Backers of the proposal, while acknowledging the privacy concerns, say that the benefits of having more information about students outweigh the risks, especially for lawmakers who oversee federal aid programs.