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Feds Propose National Database of College Students
Dore writes "The Department of Education wants to collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN. Privacy is assured. The No Child Left Behind Act, which holds primary and secondary schools accountable prompted this line of thinking. Now colleges should be held accountable. If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be."
Oh? Well, that certainly clears things up, no privacy concerns then, its not like anyone bribeable will have access to it...
You can't take the sky from me...
Crispin
No Child's Personal Information Left Behind
The US federal government has proposed creating a national database to track people?? STOP THE PRESSES!!
I mean, really... do we NEED to track every little thing someone does? How about a national database for tracking when everyone uses the restroom. We could put little sensors on all toilets to track how often they're flushed!
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
See! With the Republicans in charge, we can be positive that States and Localities will gain strength and that the federal government's power is limite....oh, wait. Never mind.
Does America have any laws regarding compulsory education to a certain level?
If that exists and yet does not extend to college level, one has to wonder why this is being proposed.
Also I can't see any real benefits (eg. in terms of missing persons) of this scheme. Anybody would like to think up some?
If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be.
Does this sentence make sense to anyone else around here? Or rather...
This sentence make sense to anyone else around here does?
Where does it end? I mean really.. Broadcast flags are one things, but keeping tabs on every person that enters college? That's insane..
Granted not a lot of people finish college, but a great deal start.. and the idea that the government feels the need to keep track of me in yet another way is outragious..
By the time we get to college, we're in charge of making sure we succeed, not the government
Looks like ole George Orwell was off by about 20 years.
After all, aren't they the ones indoctrinating our future leaders with all this nanny-state nonsense?
No further legislation needed. (Also keep in mind we're talking about college students-- legal adults. Creating a No Child Left Behind-like database has more legal problems to consider.)
public school? i.e. community colleges- defensible.. private institutions? none of their damn business.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If it's just to gather better statistics, wouldn't reporting data on just 5% of a college's students be enough? Of course, this would have to be the same 5% of students tracked through their whole academic careers, but that would be simple enough to do with a hash of SSN's.
If the government doesn't go for this proposal, I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This is bad move by the US Department of Education. Much of this information is uneeded. I quote from the article:
Under the new system proposed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education, each student enrolled in college would have a computer record that included name, address, birth date, gender, race, and Social Security number. It would then track field of study, credits, tuition paid, and financial aid received and would follow the student if he or she transferred or dropped out and later reenrolled.
Why does name, address, birth date, gender, race and Social Security have to do with this obstensible goals? An anonymous survey could be effective to gain whatever information they can possibly hope to gain from this system. They seem to be concerned with transfer students, but these could just be tracked without private information being encoded in a databse! This is a rediculous move, and probably just another move for a more complete database of civilian's private information.
Perhaps some staticians could shed some light on what this study hopes to achieve, and why personal data is required?
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
From TFA it sounds like the point is just to make sure that students who transfer from College A to College B are not considered drop-outs from College A. Ostensibly the feds want this information for schools that recieve federal funding to track how well that money is spent.
Kind of makes you wish we were back in the Reagan era, when abolishing the Department of Education was in the Republican platform.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
As long as
1. It's searchable by name, location, major and gender
2. It includes pictures
3. You can rate each person
I say we just grow up, be adults and die.
This is not a part of the draft. They already have Selective Service registration. This is an attempt to keep an eye on foreign nationals in college with the added bump of keeping an eye on everyone in college. So will your school do it? Bet your ass compulsory membership is tied to getting fed money. Smile! Smile! Smile!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
How about they keep a database of college students who don't contribute to their friggin' group projects? That'd benefit students a lot. I, for one, got sick and tired of doing the work of 2 or 3 people all by myself during college. It even happens in grad school!
It makes sense, when you think about it. How many people who voted for Bush could possibly be affected by this scheme?
[o]_O
Fact is not just questionable ones but all of them. BCIS has something called the SEVIS system now to keep track of all foreign students. It's like none of them would have a privacy as each of their actions would be tracked. Now they are extending this to all of them. I was a foreign student for a while and take it from me it is a big hassle being asked and monitored each things you do when you just want to have a better education and do something good with your life.
Having over 6 teachers in my immediate family and once concidering the profession. no child left behind is a useless inititive. Why have a program that looks great but puts requirements on schoool programs without giving them the funding to reach said goals. The problem has never been documenting who gets behind, but ensuring that the school budget gets funded and passed before you fund prisons and roads. getting back to the problem why doesn't the government solve the public school problem before they take on colleges.
I have a friend that teaches in the New York City school district as a teaching fellow. They bring in recent college graduates and assist them in becoming teachers. Why? Because few people want to do the job.
He loves teaching. Through high school he coached younger kids in soccer. He has a rare gift for it.
He hates his job. There aren't books for the kids. There isn't paper for the copiers - unless he buys it. Basically, he has no materials for the majority of the classes he teaches.
His school is being punished by NCLB. They have reduced funding because they have not met minimum test score standards. Why haven't they? Because their students come from poverty and the school itself is underfunded. There are four computers in his classroom - no mice or keyboards, all broken and never replaced. How can you expect the students to be serious about education when you're not serious about giving them one? They know its a joke - they know rich kids go to schools with books and paper and they have nothing.
If you fail to meet minimum testing standards, you are given a bit of money, as any NCLB proponent will point out. This money is for basic math and reading courses. Funding for nearly all other programs is revoked. This means that teachers begin teaching for the test as to try to get their funding back. Teaching for tests is short sighted and ultimately doesn't teach the higher order thinking needed to advance in life.
He is not a teacher but a disciplinarian. He is forced to spend his time with problem students rather than helping and rewarding the good ones.
While NCLB has the nice ideal of encouraging better schools, it ultimate takes money away from those that need it the most. It further emphasizes the lack of access to education that the poor suffer.
This might be semi off topic, but I think people should know waht NCLB is like from the inside.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
From the article: "The idea, proposed by a research wing of the Department of Education, is designed to improve federal oversight of students' enrollment rates, graduation rates, and tuition. Currently, that information is provided only in summary form by universities, leaving gaps in national college statistics. When students transfer from one college to another, for example, they show up in the federal rolls as dropouts."
Apparently, metrics on student graduation rates are the lifeblood of our government. We can't tolerate even small inaccuracies.
(Of course, we can tolerate small inaccuracies in, say, our voting system. But that's just a different story.)
I can't imagine any legitimate purpose for this. Even if you argue that the government allocates public university funding based on education rates, the aggregate metrics generated by each institution should be more than sufficient. If a university isn't providing accurate data, then you need to force it to comply - not usurp its job with hideous spyware.
I imagine that the real purpose is to track foreign students at American universities. In fact, the government does have a legitimate purpose in monitoring, say, Iranian exchange students who are studying nuclear physics. But I can't imagine why they wouldn't bolt that duty to visa enforcement, rather than just brazenly spying on the population.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I propose every foreign student where an emblem in their chest marking which country they come from. It would make it easier for the government to track these people. After all, what if even one of them is a terrorist?
US students, of which nobody will ever be a terrorist, should be tracked for other reasons like to figure out what will become of them once they grow up and whether the investment on them has paid off. I propose we implant an RFID tag under the scalp of each US student. That way the Government could easily scan them at every opportunity.
It is important that we know what young people do with their lives. After all, they could become terrorists some day! Or eat children! Or even, heaven forbid, violate copyright laws! We MUST know what they're up to.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
What happened to keeping track of politicians?
I seem to recall that it was that shady lot people used to be concerned with keeping tabs on.
I've got news for you, bud. If not-so-little Johnny, who is now in college, doesn't live up to performance expectations, he'll be kicked out of the school after a semester. Then your problem will be solved - your tax dollars will no longer be sent to him.
You'll never have a complete say over where your tax dollars go, but this is one case where I think the inherent systems will succeed in assuring that the worthy receive your contributions. We don't need more restrictive measures put into place.
Almost every university I know of sends a copy of your grade card to parents if they're paying for the schooling and request the updates.
Government does subsidize higher education, saving students billions every year.
These are our tax dollars that they're shipping off to universities and I think we (the tax payers) do have a right to know what's being done with it.
If a university has a 75% drop-out rate should they be funded the same as, less then or more then a university with a 5% drop-out rate? That's worthy of debate, something not possible without this data.
Almost all Federal aid for people in college comes as loans, in one form or another. People who get grants are the ones who really need it or they could not possibly afford school, and from my experience they tend to study their asses off.
of spending tax dollars on something. You stick your mouth in the government trough, and the government sticks its microscope up your ass. And enough with the "private" colleges. They get much (and in a lot of cases, most) of their money from various government handouts, whether it's research funding, tax breaks on land and buildings, government-subsidized or -guaranteed student grants and loans, or a ton of other sources. You take the Man's money, the Man is gonna get his money's worth out of you.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
What a bunch of stupid responses here. "To improve accountability". "RTFA". Nonsense. RBTL (Read between the lines).
My bet is that the primary goal here is to track down draft-age men and women; specifically those who were smart enough not to enter into the draft database by voluntarily registering.
Another clear goal is to make it easier to keep tabs on dissendents. Colleges are usually the first place where protests happen; so it makes it a lot easier to identify and keep tabs on the troublemakers.
My, the government sure is going all out to gather and centralize all this data about the people it supposedly represents. I wonder what for?
As someone who fills out a FAFSA every year, and just applied for a Federal Loan not five minutes ago, I've already given the Department of Education all of that information twice in the last six months. While not everyone will do so, I'm sure most students will fill out a FAFSA, even if they don't get any subsidized aid.
Seems to me that the Federal Gov't already has all of this information and needn't waste any more taxpayer dollars trying to aquire it again.
Note that I'm not trying to justify their attempts at data-collection (far from it, actually), I'm just pointing out that they already have that information for most of us already.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
Almost everyone that's posted seems to think that they government is in no way entitled to this information.
The government spends billions every year on Higher education.
When I invest in something I expect to see measured results, on a regular basis. Don't you? So why is it unreasonable for the Gov't to expect this?
Furthermore, as a TAXPAYER, *I* am entitled to see statisitics about the performance of universities that I HELP FUND.
I might also find this information useful when choosing a University.
I think we should counter by demanding an openly accessible database of elected officials, government employees, and government contractors. Data should include salary, work history, who made campaign contributions to whom, and other data relevant to running the government.
Also, I'll happily contribute my own entry from my (brief) period as a government contractor.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
As a former public school teacher, I can tell you that by the time they're 16 they're plenty able to cause trouble. And if they want to drop out, it's very unlikely that forcing them to stay in will cause them to learn anything. The only reason to keep them in would be as a public-funded baby-sitting service, and I can think of better ways to spend our tax money. Sometimes I think that we should let them drop out in 9th grade (I taught 9th grade physical science - a general/remedial level science course - my last year as a teacher, and it was no coincidence that it was my last year. I have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers that keep at it year after year after year.). However, some of the kids in 9th grade, might actually straighten up. Those who are 16, however, are very unlikely to straighten up by 18. Once they've been out in the "real world", there is a slightly greater chance that they will see the errors of their ways, in which case they can go to night school and/or get their GED.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"No child left behind", while good-intentioned, was a bad idea, and this would be an even worse idea. "No child left behind" is not improving education, if anything it's making it worse by trying to hold teachers accountable for whatever the students do. Presently anyone can get through high school because the school systems are making sure no one fails. Which translates to "you pass no matter what you do because we don't want to look bad."
If the concern is whether tax money is being well spent, then secondary school should not be mandatory. Stop wasting money on students that don't want to be there. That's where tax money is really wasted. Plus, students (and, depending on their age, the parents also) should not be told by the government how to run their lives. The students that have no interest in school can drop out and, if they choose, go back later, but it degrades the educational experience of willing students to keep them there.
I know high school teachers who fear for their jobs if they fail too many students, regardless of how deserving the student is of the F.
I fear the same thing for colleges, if they too are going to be made *accountable*. A college degree will be worth about as much as a high school degree. What would it be like to have colleges fearful of failing students? Professors should not fear their jobs for failing students who deserve to fail.
The more education you have, the more likely you are to actually think about what the federal government is doing. That makes you a problem by definition. Clearly, the government needs to keep track of people like that. They need a list of people to round up as soon as habeus corpus gets suspended during the next national security emergency.
I think I started out to be sarcastic with this. The more I look at it, the less sure of that I am.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
At the university where I teach, there is an employment rule preventing dicrimination based on physical or mental ability. Yup, I said mental ability. Welcome to this side of the academic looking glass.
> I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
Educated people, on the average, are able to think critically.
Educated people, on the average, are less swayed by patriotic-sounding FUD.
Educated people, on the average, are harder to control.
Ergo, we should keep close tabs on people who wish to get an education.
If we know what they study, how successful they are and their personal and financial data, we could decide whether we prefer to use them for our purposes, ignore them or make them quiet. We would also know what leverage to apply.
There, you have your reason. Happy now?
Colleges are dens of unpatriotic and subversive activity, and there is no doubt that the government needs to take a more active role in stamping out possible terrorist sympathizers operating in the liberal sanctuaries of our major universities. This database will definitely help law enforcement and homeland security officials to quickly and efficiently crack down on suspected terrorist sympathizers in the universities, and help to protect all regular Americans from terrorism. After September 11, we know what happens when we let our guard down against terrorists, and we know that we have a responsibility to give law enforcement officials the tools they need to fight terrorism wherever it lurks.
My mother is a lead teacher for special education and has told me that this act applies to her children as well. Some of these children have IQ's below 60, and the school is held responsible for all of them (not just a percentage), passing the standardized tests.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's probably going to be used to track terrorists doing specialized degrees at universities.
Here in Finland and other countries in northern Europe we have a long tradition in collecting everything in databases. University students get into several databases which include personal information like name, age, parents, social status, cell phone number. Actually everything but hair color.
I just can't see any problem. There is no privacy to lose any more. Why should I care about federal registers while credit card companies know everything I buy, my ISP knows where I spend my time and those smart fellows who keep closest APT repository online know my favorite editor. Probably I couldn't even do moon shine without getting into dozen registers.
We are filed way beyond anything my glorious filehappy homeland can imagine.
Isn't it nice?
No Citizen Left Unwatched
Coming soon to a Congress near you! (Only available within the US.)
Oh, man, that is the WORST attempt at flamebait I have EVER seen, and I have seen alot.
You fail it. Better luck next time.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Some of those foreigners are pretty suspicious. Take my roommate, for example. He's from Japan and speaks very little English. He hangs out alot with a Jamaican that lives across the hall. He's Japanese, yet he never plays my Gamecube. Not only that, but he's never played DDR! Something is strange here...he's not fitting my stereotype...
... the government promises not to do anything bad with the list?
Now, however, there is a movement in Washington, particularly among Republicans, to demand greater accountability from universities in exchange for the federal support they provide.
That ummm, who provides?
I don't want a university system that it tied to the agenda of our federal officials.
There is a cost to not monitoring individuals and I for one am willing to pay it.
Of course, the problem there is that opting out of the federal money doesn't decrease the federal taxation level. A state opting out of those funds would have to raise its own taxes to provide the equivalent service. The net effect is an increase in taxes on the population of the state which is hard to sell under the the banner of decreased federal oversight.
well, if you assume that foreign/international students have to acquire student visas in order to come and study here, then they already are fairly effectively tracked, since the INS has been part of the dept. of homeland security for several years now. from what i've heard/observed, they're pretty strict on issuing them, and not much less lax on keeping track of them afterwards.
i'm slightly confused by their spurious argument; i understand how transfers would show up as dropouts in one column, but shouldn't they then show up as transfers in another? they say something about how students then end up not appearing to graduate from any institution...if these are school-reported statistics, then the school they graduate from would report that, right? i feel like i'm missing something here.
"collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN."
What about a "appeared recently in 'Gilrs Gone Wild?'" flag?
More sound and fury. As long as coeds are willing to sell their dignity on the latest GGW Spring Break for a T-Shirt, then I don't think there will be much to worry about. Don't all colleges already have your information? Some even have smart card ID's.
Yes, I agree. With China economically ascendant and the US hooked on Asian debt relief, it will be helpful to know the names of our future bosses.
Privacy is going the way of the buffalo. Whatever college you are attending already has all that info, as well as any scholarships you applied for. The Feds also have the info if you used to FAFSA to apply for financial aid. All that info is also on your taxes, social security, credit info, loans, (for us guys) Selective Service cards, voter registration, driver's license, passports, visas, etc etc. I don't see one more database as a big deal. You're already being tracked. Time to get tin foil pajamas.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
SEVIS is already here. Granted, not everyone will trigger a recors to be sent to INS, but those who fit the terrorist profile we're looking for. Strangely, I find that this seems to violate the fed's own FERPA laws....but I guess they could break thier own laws....
Gorkman
And my fingerprints have both arches and whorls, and as such are supposedly the easiest type to differentiate. She thought she was doing me a favor, what if someone snatched me (a beautiful little while child - no really I was cute as hell when I was little, something bad must have happened) and sold me to the turks or something!? But basically now I can never commit crimes without gloves. Curse it all! Hopefully no one will start collecting dna samples on a regular basis any time soon or I'll really be screwed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Part of the current act is that public schools are mandated to turn over personal information about students to armed forces recruiting so that no child will miss out on the oportunity to die in bushes fucked up war for oil. Parents who dont want their childern contacted must opt-out in order to keep their childerns from being inundated with calls and glossy pamflets.
The effort to create this database may be in response to the recent judgement that universities can deny access to military recruiters because of discriminatory practices against gays. This overturned a 1994 a defense authorization bill that allowed the goverment to withhold funding from public institutions that denied access to recruiters.
The hopeless war in iraq is making it more difficult to recruit a new generation of jarheads. Retention is down so they were forced to make do with a back door draft in order to retain enough personel to maintain our insufficient forces in iraq & afganastan. If bush starts a third war against Iran(with large oil and natural gas reserves), launched from our spiffy new bases in Iraq, we will need to dramatically increase the number of military personel beyond what can be build using volenteers. This new database will come in handy when the National Freedom Expanders Act is passed to compel military service unless you happen to be in a rich an powerful family in which case reporting for Patriot Duty is optional.
We have the best government that money can buy.
Just incase no one else has mentioned this American patriot's opinion.
4 .htm/
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/quotable/quote0
Also, as much as you instictively want to protect them from the big bad world, going too far could really screw them up. The super-sheltered kids I know are almost to the individual annoying, and have difficulty adjusting to new environments (i.e. college).
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Yes, but there may be more to this than you think.
... they basically stole it, and not just from the U.S. But, it's a hell of lot easier to come here and ferry knowhow home that it would be from a lot of other places: we're pretty much a goldfish bowl in that respect. I'm not demeaning the engineering prowess of China's technologists, per se, but let's face it: they came a very long way in a very short time and didn't do it all by themselves. They bootstrapped themselves from our hard-earned investments and are now using it against us in what amounts to economic warfare. Not the actions of a friendly trading partner, or even a good neighbor, internationally speaking. A lot of Slashdotters hold America accountable for its brand of economic imperialism, but China is proving to be even more formidable in that regard. Once America has been brought to its knees ... the rest of you better watch out. Economic imperialism may be the least of your worries.
Terrorist threats aside, there is a lot of stuff being blatantly ripped off by Chinese students and professional technical people. China is "economically ascendent" (i.e. "becoming a high-tech society") but they sure as hell didn't do it all by themselves: neither did Japan for that matter. We gave Japan their head start after the Second World War but we made no such gift to China
I know a company where a Chinese engineer was hired during development of a significant piece of technology. He worked there until the project was completed, then stole the prototype and flew home to China the same night and gave it to a manufacturer on the Chinese mainland (where it turned out he was still employed.) Frankly, that should have been an international incident, but I assume the management of that company didn't want the embarrassment. I know several other similar cases (I was in and out of a lot of places as a consultant for many years.) Obviously Chinese immigrants to the U.S. aren't much of a terrorism threat (the Chinese engineers I know are generally damn good, but are hardly terrorists), but I certainly do see some of them as being very capable (and culpable) with regard to industrial espionage.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's not just graduation rates; it's also tuition. Granted it's not the lifeblood of govenment, but it is pretty critical these days. Tuition has gone up tremendously in the last thirty years- not so long ago, the most expensive colleges cost a few thousand dollars a year. Now we're talking fifty thousand. It's grown well beyond the rate of inflation and is one of the major problems that faces the US. The vast majority of this data is already available to the government anyway, because of the FAFSA. (Federal Application For Student Aid.) The main practical differences? (a) The very rich aren't exempt from government tracking of this data, and (b) It might be possible for law enforcement to circumvent certain federal regulations involving a school's disclosure of personal financial information. However, I'd imagine they can already do this...
Well, now I'm DEFINITELY not going to college.
There's already a National Directory of New Hires. This is supposedly to locate "deadbeat dads". Enforcement against employers is weak. But it's there.
Obviously intended as flamebait, but such a database exists: SEVIS - Student and Exchange Visitor Information System
The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is a web-based system for maintaining information on international students and exchange visitors in the United States. Administered by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
SEVIS is designed to keep our nation safe while facilitating the entry and exit process for foreign students in the United States and for students seeking to study in the United States.
To Americans today, "keeping our nation safe" is synonymous with trusting government to act in our best interests. How have so many failed to learn the lessons so clearly taught by our nation's founders, that the government is the enemy of liberty?
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
And how do you think the US amounted to anything? Yup, by flounting international copywright and patent law. In the early days, the US ripped technical feats off, and sold un-royaltied literature at cheap, cheap (warez-ed) prices. That is how countries get started.
So get off your high horse, because that is how all industrial nations (except britain, who had the first mover disadvantage...go read your economics books) started.
As to the rest of your xenophobic post...wow, you really don't get how the world works. Or has worked for the past couple of centuries.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
If you have filled out a FAFSA or applied for a loan the Department of Education already has all the information. Part of my job is making sure the mandatory reporting gets sent to DOE. That is on top of other federal reporting, IPEDS, FISAP, etc. Granted most of the reports are general statistics, as the article mentioned, however there is a more information that is required to be reported than most people realize.
Please, leave me here, behind. I feel safer when you're in front of me.
Sincerely,
Jame
Here's a topic where its worth posting as an AC...
As an ex-programmer for a university, and then a major player in the higher education software application market, I have been involved in the creation of the REAL existing student tracking database. It is NOT FAFSA, and it DOES contain personal identification data. Any institution that receives grant or loan money from publically funded programs is REQUIRED to identify and report EVERY student enrolled at least once per enrollment period (semester/quarter). In the industry it is known as the Federal student loan clearinghouse. Its stated purpose is to insure against fraudulent applications, receipt, and use of student loan and grant monies. I assure you that the folks running the show weren't qualified to design the collection system, nor are they sophisticated enough to use it to track your association to terrorist organizations (except if you count U.C. Berkley to be one). I can also assure you that they HAVE prevented the federal loan and grant programs from funding your 7th-year freshman roommates sports-car purchase. Dont ask me to count how many times I've seen the junior with the 1.2 G.P.A. drop out in the third week of the semester and try to withdraw the $20,000 of student loan money they thought no-one would notice. Before you take to much pride in your tin-foil hats, ask around and find out how much they have collected from ex-students who CLAIM to be full-time students so they can delay the repayment of thier $60,000 in student loans. There are MILLIONS of reasons why both public and private instituions are willing to give this information up, and every single one of them has to do with making sure the federal funding of higher education doesn't look like the $300,000 toilets the pentagon uses to flush taxpayer money away.
Well, USA is fighting a "terroisom war" and Iraq is quite a mess, with a possible invasion of other "rogue countries" like North Korea.... so the college student database is a great aid to draft people into the army.
Well, unlike Nam's time, people who is smart enough getting into college will also be drafted to the military. Military needs a lot of electrical engineers and programmers too.
(2) It feeds our skilled workforce. Many people who are educated here elect to stay. If you agree that top-flight people are worth having around, than this is good.
(3) It facillitates idea exchange. Folks at school learn from each other, sometimes more than fromtheir professors. I can't think of a downside here.
(4) It builds international connections. People who went to school together tend to stay in contact. They make business deals, diplomatic relations, and generally help countries understand each other.
If that really isn't enough for you, look to history for what happens to nations that become myopic. Don't think it won't happen here, unless you're prepared to explain how the U.S. is different from every other empire in history.
I forget what 8 was for.
you're missing the point...brain scans have proven that a human being under 21 does not process information the same way as an adult...in every sense of the phrase, they are mentally handicapped when compared to an adult...a primary example is the stimulation of visual creativity when asked questions that would normally spur memory retrieval...especially when those questions relate to topics of cause and effect. So while you, as an adult, are aware of cause and effect from memories you hold, and underdeveloped brain doesn't access memory, but instead tries to visually imagine the impact of the cause and effect with no reference material to base assumptions on. What I find amazing is that someone who would normally think it inconvievable to make a handicapped person responsible for their actions would quite happily make a teenager responsible, where they suffer from similar disorders just at varying degrees.
Science has proven that teenages brains DO NOT FUNCTION PROPERLY...how can you impose the very adult concept of reciprocality on a brain that can't comprehend it. That would be like me (an australian) berating a frenchman for not knowing who RM Williams is.
its Big Brother. At the vary least such a registry would enhance the reach of the draft when the Bush league resurrect it.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
You are correct in this matter -- but the problem is that we'll never know who in the future will have that data. Yes, we're a Republic, but we still stand the chance of electing officals that are absolutely horrible to the populace. Hitler was elected by the populace! That crap can and has happened. The less information the Federal government has the better.
They absolutely must prove that under no circumstances can they do their jobs without said data for me to reliquish it.
Nowhere in the Constitution is education mentioned. They have NO business in it and they have NO reason to collect data on the matter. I don't want the feds knowing what college classes I took, what guns I may own, what my sexual preference is, or how much money I made. It's none of their damned business frankly.
I think this sentiment is a big reason why most of the US population, ufortunately, and the world at large, fails to understand WHY privacy/liberty advocates rally against the above bullcrap.
Simply put Federal government is a problem by it's very nature. If you disagree I would urge you to read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers penned by the Founders of the US. The Anti-Federalists simply stated, through a series of papers, that the Federal government would grow out of control and gather more powers than delegated. The Federalists figured a strict Constitution would hold it in check. Well, the Anti-Federalists were right. An issue such as this wouldn't have even surfaces if they weren't.
We're not certain that such a violation would happen -- but it is a possibility. Are you certain that I would misuse your personal information? Well -- how about you fax over your bank records and receipts for everything you purchased in the past few months. I'll maybe help you sort out your budget. You're not certain I'll misuse the information after all. How about your diet and excersise schedules? Send 'em on over -- I'll aggregate the data to make a perfet diet/excercise routine for the populace after a while. It's for the common good, you know.
people will get used to it (for example: radar detectors cops use to catch speeders, phone wire taps the FBI has the power to setup), and not all at once... it'll just be the norm, even convenient at each little interval. But, take a snapshot of today, and compare it to 30 years from now, and you'll probably feel like you've stepped into a utopia novel without ever realizing that you were doing it.
Speak for yourself.
You're only the millionth person to post that to slashdot, wanker.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
And Bush cries about Democrats embarking on pork barrel spending? The Department of Education doesn't need to get their hands in this. There are already companies out there who are doing it: they're called student loan companies. I'm sure you've heard of them (i.e. Sallie Mae, the biggest one ever!). They know everything about you, and they'll track you down if you try to run and hide. They make sure to know when you graduate, because that's when they start getting paid!
College students should worry about their privacy, because I know that Sallie Mae outsources their service/call center, and current laws are vague about the legalities of this. Imagine all your personal information accessible halfway across the world by god knows who? Sure the internet does this already, but how secure is Sallie Mae's systems? If the government wants to spend dollars where it's worth it, then spend it on auditing Sallie Mae and their practices, to ensure that students are treated fairly.
Linux at home
To make you all feel a little bit better (or a little bit more paranoid) there already exists a non-governmental organization called the National Student Clearinghouse. Higher education institutions alredy voluntarily submit student information (in keeping with FERPA) -- it looks like the main difference is performance oriented. No classes and grades, and not even complete major information until you receive your degree. It is actually quite useful for institutional researchers -- but those are not the sorts of people that you need to worry about.
Look, there are some genuine irrationalities in the way that Federal support for higher education works right now, and some of what's described sounds like a genuine effort to address that. This was covered in detail in the Chronicle of Higher Ed last Spring, I think. So let's not break out the tinfoil hats too quickly.
On the other hand there is something insidious about assessing an institution's success by its ability to process students and pass out degrees. Sometimes college students really should leave for a couple of years and get a job before finishing, or transfer, and some students are going to fail. I teach in a state university and there's constant pressure from the legislature to admit more students -- politicians understand that getting degrees is popular. So you move toward essentially open admissions. Some of those students have poor skills -- not necessarily their fault, but for some reason public education has not served them well. So either you lower standards, or you flunk more of them out. I deal with students in tears, students spending money and time to get degrees for which they lack requisite basic skills. So just as current Federal policy is producing kids who are good at taking standardized tests but little else, the pressure now reaches higher ed to churn out grads who may not have learned a whole lot.
If India eats our lunch it's our own damn fault.
... for those who abuse this database.
Tag lost or not installed.
For that reason alone, when America gets involved in anyones' business, be it for good reasons or bad, people don't trust them. It would be different if America didn't abuse the trust of other nations.
It's supposed to be:
bust='34' and cup_size='b'
It just doesn't make any sense to do it any other way.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
When the U.S. got started there was no international patent or copyright law. British inventions were protected by export controls with very large criminal penalties.
Dickens argued for copyright protection in his american tour of 1842. This was an industrial America energized by the introduction of steam power, the railroad, and the telegraph. Much of this development financed in London. 1860 would be last year in which the rural population held a bare majority. We are not talking third-world here.
The pirating of foreign works was hurting american authors. Why pay at home for what you can steal from abroad?
Demonstrate that we ever had any privacy. The days before massive databases were also the days before credit cards and faceless megacorps that could care less who you are as long as you pay on time. If you weren't a hermit or a pioneer, your doctor/banker/grocer/etc. all knew you personally. People who *didn't* know you personally wouldn't take significant risks with you until they did, or until they'd checked you out with "respected members of the community". The whole town knew who you were, and if they didn't like who you were, it was time to find a new town.
We probably have more real privacy today than ever before. Some people seem to want total anonymity, and that's never existed.
If China pegs over to the Euro the the USA will be history.
No. China's pegging the Renmibi to the US Dollar drags down the Renmibi, enabling the flux of cheap made-in-China goods to the United States. However, a poor US dollar is good for American manufacturers because that in turn makes it a whole lot easier for American exports. But it's definitely in favor of China. If the Renmibi were floated, the price of Chinese-made goods would skyrocket (China right now is like America in the Roaring 20's), and they'd lose a big part of their competitive edge.
More worrying for me is that if OPEC starts pricing in Euros instead of US dollars. Strengths in the Euro, a currency that is proving itself mightily fiscally sound, would be felt at home, hard--we are the energy economy. As I understand it, OPEC sells more oil products to Europe, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is proposing such a transition. When the price of oil skyrocketed, Europeans barely felt the difference because of the weak US dollar.
The debt issue is a big one, as you rightfully pointed out. We back this up with the hegemony of the US dollar held in foreign reserves, but, if this hegemony is dilluted by the Euro or whatever currency, there goes most of the dollar value--which, guess what, is already being dragged down by the deficit itself. It's a vicious circle.
The two solutions to this are getting America off the oil economy, before it's too late, and reigning in government spending--neither of which this administration really cares about. That's what's most frightening.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater