watching our students, to the finest detail...

[acroyear]

Big Brother on Campus:

Does the federal government need to know whether you aced Aristotelian ethics but had to repeat introductory biology? Does it need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home?

The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education thinks so. In its first draft report, released in late June, the commission called for creation of a tracking system to collect sensitive information about our nation's college students. Its second draft, made public last week, softens the name of the plan, but the essence of the proposal remains unchanged.

Whether you call it a "national unit records database" (the first name) or a "consumer-friendly information database" (the second), it is in fact a mandatory federal registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers -- every course, every step, every misstep. Once established, it could easily be linked to existing K-12 and workforce databases to create unprecedented cradle-to-grave tracking of American citizens. All under the watchful eye of the federal government.

The main problem with these surveys (besides the complete and utter lack of evidence that such knowledge is actually in any way useful for future students, much less those who give up their privacy for it) is their need to maintain uniqueness and associativity - if student 1 does X and student 1 has Y, those features for correlation purposes need to be associated with the same student - and the easiest though certainly not the best way to do this is to just associate it all with the SSN.  This of course means that such information follows the student once they're out of school.  THAT is a problem.  A huge one.  And as the author notes, an illegal one.  The SSN (in spite of what half the states and 3/4ths of the universities have done) is NOT meant to be used as the ultimate ID number, and the ACLU would have an easy time throwing this out out in the courts if they ever tried it.

But as i said, the first problem is that there is no proof at all that such detailed personal information in the hands of ANY government official will actually lead to any substantial improvement in policy.

Its Big Brother in its fullest - control over YOU for no other reason than the technology enables it.

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

"This will be on your permanent record!"

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

There are reasons to do this, that have more to do with improving university education than with following student info around. I agree that it should not be linked to the SSN - other tracking numbers are usable and less linkable to individual students.
But with parents and the government clamoring for more information on what these expensive college educations are actually doing for their kids, and for more accountability on the part of universities and colleges, it helps, from the university perspective, to be able to look at the records and say, "Well, we graduate 80% of those we admit - of the rest, 10% transfer out and graduate within four-six years from other institutions, 5% eventually graduate from other institutions, and 5% never achieve degrees. Now, what are the demographics of that last 5% and how can that information help us provide them with adequate support so that they can achieve their degrees in future?" Or some such thing.
Unit-record data has its place, but confidentiality is absolutely necessary and the tracking number used cannot and should not be traceable by anyone other than the people who absolutely need to know.