The Education Department submitted a report to Congress Monday evaluating the feasibility of creating a national student unit record system.
The report, which was initiated by the National Center for Education Statistics, focused on whether such an information system could and should be constructed by the government.
According to the report, the interest in creating a unit record system was sparked by the desire to monitor issues like the impacts of college price increases and to generate better data in a timely fashion.
If the Education Department receives approval from Congress, the new system would contain individually identifiable records of all higher education students in the nation. The data collected would include distinctive information such as a student's social security number, number of college courses and credits, major, time to complete a degree and financial aid status.
One aspect the report addressed was the privacy issues that have generated controversy. There is concern that students' individually identifiable data, like Social Security numbers, could be misused once compiled on a national level.
"One of the primary concerns that I have heard expressed by many people is the privacy issue," said George Stovall, director of the University's office of Institutional Assessment. "I'm sure they will do everything they can to protect the information, but there's always a risk."
He also said while the University has a database containing similar information about its students, making additional copies of it and pooling it at the national level would increase the risk that information is misused.
According to the report, there have not been any instances where individually identifiable information collected by NCES has been wrongfully disclosed, and the only allowable disclosures of the data would have to be specifically authorized in the Higher Education Act legislation.
Other concerns about the creation of the unit record system include the burden of initial implementation, coordination of the flow of data and other technological challenges.
If the system is created, the report states that many colleges will have to bear the burden of updating software and even hiring and training new employees to deal with the tracking and reporting of information.
Stovall said the University already has most of the data that would be needed in its student information system, but it still would require a significant additional workload.
According to the report, higher education student information currently is gathered in summary form through the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System, which poses many limitations when trying to compile specific statistics. There is no way to measure information such as the net college price or transfer rates.
Dean of Students Penny Rue said one deficiency in the current system is that there is no way to track a student who enrolls in one school originally but graduates from another.
According to the report, the new unit record system, similar to those used by the National Student Loan Data System and the NCAA, would be capable of tracking trends across institutions and within institutions and could generate better information for informed customer decisions.
While other alternatives to the unit record system have been considered, each has its own costs and/or disadvantages.
"I don't think the gains outweigh the privacy risks to any individual campus," Rue said.
To implement the unit record system, amendments will need to be made to the Higher Education Act, and Congress will need to appropriate funds.
According to the report, the necessary amendments could be made as soon as this summer, with full-scale implementation of the system following in the 2007-2008 school year.
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