A $2.9 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund the new National Student Clearinghouse database, which will provide a research and reporting system enabling high schools throughout the country to track college enrollment and graduation statistics about their graduates. Already, though, some higher education experts and students have raised privacy concerns about the database.
The database would allow high schools to evaluate the effectiveness of their current college preparatory resources for students via access to concrete statistics that would otherwise be impossible to acquire, NSC Marketing Director Kathleen Dugan said.
“The database provides empirical data on college attendance and graduation rates, rather than anecdotal information, to improve their understanding of whether or not they’re actually succeeding in helping their student succeed in getting through college,” Dugan said. “It gives them information that they really don’t know now.”
High schools across the country have invested significant amounts of money into programs designed to help students get into college, Dugan said.
“They want to know whether or not they’ve been able to properly prepare their students to get into college and once they’re in college to proceed all the way to graduation,” Dugan said.
Despite such stated benefits for high schools, Virginia Carter, University director of external relations, expressed some concerns about the available information in the new database. She said she and others in higher education are worried about how student information would be protected if contained in one central location.
“I think we all have concerns given the prevalence of information that is out there,” Carter said. “I think we all have concerns about how private that information is and accessible it might be.”
Carter noted that the University is very careful with sensitive student information, adding that although having all student information in one central location could be a good thing, it could also raise security issues.
“As a university, we take as many steps as possible to safeguard student data. Privacy is real concern right now for everyone — and it should be,” Carter said, adding that “we have policies and procedures on how that data is shared, and at this point, the [concept of a national student database] is new terrain.”
Third-year Engineering student Matt Andrews also said he is hesitant about the availability of the information.
“I think definitely some privacy issues might arise. If someone was looking for your information and you didn’t want them to, it’d be an issue,” Andrews said.
Dugan disagreed, however, noting that by benefiting educational institutions by supplying information, students will benefit eventually as well.
“If high schools understand whether or not they’re currently successful in getting into college, they can apply the lessons learned to the students as they come through high schools,” Dugan said. “I expect most colleges will benefit from having ... entering freshmen who are better prepared to go and stay in college.”
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