Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Government Wants Detailed College Data
Doofus writes "Apparently aggregate data are no longer enough for the trusty US Dept. of Education, as we can read in this opinion piece Alma Mater as Big Brother in today's Washington Post. As the author, a college president tells us, the governement would require schools "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". And the author counters by pointing out the obvious but real threat of such aggregation: "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.""
Cause the way things are going, it's damn sure that it's dead and someone needs to be saying the prayers.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Its bad enough reading about all these idetity thefts taking place, but when you find out its because someone decided to create this wonderful new database of only info that an identity theif could use.. does anyone else think this is a dumb idea?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Won't somebody think of the children!
Nice to see that they're still churning out complete screw-up policies like this. Oh wait, no it's not. Damn. It really saddens me how society seems to be going right down the drain, and the people who are supposed to be preventing this are usually the ones that end up causing it. This situation is a perfect example of why I really dislike the concept of politicians. Lets see, a group of people who desperately want lots of personal power. Uh, hello? Alarm bells ringing!
Santa's suicide mission go!
...no male who ever got a nickle in loans or scholarships has avoided being enrolled in this database from the get-go and which database is that? The selective service of course.
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.
The people who are recommending this are not interested in your privacy. I recall a time when Republicans stood for a less intrusive government, or they did until they figured it served their interests to do otherwise. I switched my party affiliation from Republican to Democrat this year. Even Newt Gingrich doesn't understand what happened to the GOP. If it weren't for the fact that all the newspapers (except NYT) have rolled over in the face of the constant Bush terror propaganda, this kind of thing would be big news. Scary as fuckin hell.
The Department of Education already collects more information about students than you even imagine.
First of all is the FAFSA. This has become the defacto student financial aid applications. Many institutions have their own financial aid applications but to receive any federal financial aid the person must fill out the FAFSA. All the data on the FAFSA is electronically transfered to the student's institution.
Since federal financial aid can be administered by private banks as well as the government and this aid goes to millions of students in thousands of schools it is an enormaous exercise to track the data. Say hello to the National Student Clearinghouse. Not every school participaces in the NSCH but most of them do because everybody else does. From the NSCH, institutions can BUY your data.
Each year ALL institutions that participate in federal financial aid programs, which is over 90% of them, must respond to the NCES IPEDS data collection. IPEDS is a complete, albeit aggregate, data collection tool but it drills down to such detail that for a small to medium sized instituion it's not difficult to get some good stuff.
Many states have combined student data repositories that the state higher education committe can regularly utilize.
This is just the start. Colleges regularly participate in data exchanges with other institutions. For those who want to scream FERPA right now, remember there is a big loophole called "legitimate academic interest" that allows the institution to use whatever data they so choose.
There is more personalized data about each and every student floating around hundreds and even thousands of institutions that nobody has any control over any of it.
The proposed list of variables the the department of education wants to collect per student can be seen on page 74 of the IPEDS SURS Feasability study.
I work in an Institutional Research office in a major university what NCES is proposing in nothing compared to what is already available.
How can schools report every students SSN when the colleges are required, by law, not to ask for SSN? Yes, yes, I know that they all DO ask for it, but it seems like this is going from ignorance of the law to intentionally going against it.
On a note of that, I've been told that the social security act banned certain uses of the SSN as ID. Is that really really true? If so, where does it say that? I would love to actually take a university to court and make them change. Why hasn't anyone done this?
No. So that the US Armed Forces can recruit (or, if you want to be even more cynical, draft) who they please.
Military recruiting is an an all-time low despite rather large bonuses for signing up, re-enlistment, and so on. If Iraq doesn't wrap up soon, the military will simply run out of people who want to be in the military.
Rumsfield keeps telling us how they prefer a volunteer military, but if it comes down to "needing a soldier for that gun", they'll put anyone there.
Please help metamoderate.