“I am not the first to suggest that the Department of Education will not be able to protect unit record data.”

This sounds like an accreditor whining to me. He is saying that the less we know about what really goes on in HE, the better. Yup — gotta protect those hundred year old privileges and the interests of their member institutions! Gee, think of all the paper work involved!

On the other hand, he raises a good point: “Consider that 39 states have been collecting such data, some for more than 20 years ... yet there is no indication that states have experienced enhanced educational outcomes or generated particularly wise policies as a result ...”

This disconnect between data and results is important to investigate. Why have the states not been doing their jobs? Where are all the studies that this motherlode should have generated? Folks working on student retention and persistence, for example, should be out there creating a mountain of studies. What do we have instead? Rather 2-dimensional NCES-based surveys.

Glen McGhee, FHEAP, at 9:20 am EDT on October 17, 2006

no big brother, no problem

My first comment was eaten, but here it is in brief.

While the argument that smaller experiments with Longitudinal studies should be analyzed before rolling this out across the country has merit, the rest of the article does not.

First of all, nobody has a privacy interest in their prior academic history beyond what is provided by statute. If someone flunks out of a school they cannot erase their past. Moreover, there is nothing illegal, immoral, or wrong about a school or employer demanding to know whether someone has a track record of failure punctuated by a success. Indeed, I think much less of a person who “practiced” going to school, and then did it for real some time later, and only tells people about their second try. (Indeed, students, on a semi-routine basis do get in trouble for this. Most schools that care about it – i.e. law schools – allow students to “amend” applications, but there is nothing stopping the school from reporting them to the bar examiners, as such deception on an application which explicitly asks about prior law school experience is evidence of deplorably bad character.)

Secondly, it is quite silly to think that people “discover” their ethnicity in college, and then, lo and behold, declare themselves to be some ethnicity just because they learned about it in college. This sounds like a way to game affirmative action programs to me.

Third, believe it or not, not only do employers care about someone’s history, but so do personal associates. I don’t want to be associated with failures. I know this sounds bad, but I try and only associate with “winners.” They tend to be smarter and not ask for money.

Finally, enforcing a “don’t ask” provision isn’t too hard. Simply providing a civil remedy (perhaps with a statutory minimum) for a discriminating against people who don’t reveal their dossiers would work wonders. Title VII has caused employers to stop asking about religion and other forbidden topics.

Larry, at 9:50 am EDT on October 17, 2006

What is success in college?

Bernard Fryshman is one of very few writers on higher education whose work I always read, and as usual he raises some interesting issues. In this case, he understates what I think is his most important point.

We are attempting to measure and track “student success” as though the term were interchangeable with employment success. They are not the same. What a student gets out the college experience varies markedly and is only partly measurable by grades or future employability. As a society, we increasingly think of universities as job training and the beans we count are those related to employment or employability.

This crude mechanical approach to education ignores the fact that college is also a time for development as a person and a citizen. These things cannot be divined from any kind of database, and the unit record concept, thought it may help track the use of federal aid, has nothing to do with the value of the college experience to the human.

State legislatures also want to know what they get for the money they spend on colleges. The answer is all around them, not in the nature of the workforce but in the nature of the graduates.

Alan Contreras, Administrator at Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, at 11:50 am EDT on October 17, 2006

Counting students like cattle

The current administration also demands to register small-farm livestock (not factory farm livestock) in the name of food safety. They’ve cut back slaughterhouse testing and prevented one producer in Kentucky from voluntarily testing 100% of its beef, but they insist on a database to “fight” mad cow disease. The unit data proposal parallels the livestock registration program. The administration starves common-sense measures in favor of a masive data base, “voluntary” at first. As Fryshman warns, the database won’t fulfill its supposed purpose, because similar statewide efforts haven’t helped. But it will come to constitute a prerequisite for middle class status. Experience with no-fly lists and credit reports shows us the likelihood of errors. More important, even if our dossier is correct,the administration is setting up a system under which we can’t enter the middle class, as already we can’t fly or buy a house, without electronic approval.

Alison, freelance journalist, at 12:16 pm EDT on October 17, 2006

National Trust

“Now consider a student who was unable to make a successful transition to College A at 18 and wants to start all over at College B four or five years later. He is willing to forgo transfer credits and doesn’t mention his earlier, embarrassing failure. But a unit record match will quickly bring his past to the attention of people at College B.” To an extent, anyone who receives Federal financial aid is already subjected to this pattern. Transcripts from one college to another are a requirement. In addition, many companies and schools now run complete educational histories on applicants, so any “sordid past” is likely to surface even without this new database. Anyone working in government is certainly accustomed to this kind of invasive practice.

I guess I partially hold the attitude that “nothing is private anyway, so what’s the difference?” So long as people are not discriminating against a student or using that information in ways that can hurt the student, it makes no difference to me who knows what. It’s not the “knowing” that is the problem. It’s what is done as a result of “knowing.” I realize my perspective on this, however, is generally unpopular, as most people tend to be more guarded and certainly do not trust humanity to make sound decisions once they do, indeed “know.” Maybe we should work on earning and learning trust as opposed to working on databases.

kgotthardt, at 2:20 pm EDT on October 17, 2006