January 3, 2005

Federal Plan to Track All College Students Under Fire

A federal government plan to create a database to track student enrollment at colleges and universities is drawing the attention of privacy advocates. Currently colleges and universities only provide tracking information on students receiving federal student aid, and general statistics on enrollment. The plan will allow the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education to receive, analyze and protect personally identifiable student information. They say that they have never been forced to turnover student information to law enforcement in the past.

Student-data plan raises privacy concerns, The State.com, November 29, 2004