The president of Gettysburg College is complaining of a new proposal by the US Department of Education to create a tracking database that would hold massive amounts of information about students’ entire collegiate career from kindergarten through PhD’s. Every class taken, every grade earned, every class passed or failed, every grant earned or loan disbursed would be stored in the database, linked to every student by social security number.
Of what possible use is this database except to further invade the privacy of Americans? There is no national security issue here. The alleged justification is to ensure accountability in the education system, but I fail to see how enabling such a massive intrusion into privacy would further that goal.
As the Gettysburg College president points out, this database would remove control of a student’s grades from the student and pass it to the federal government. There are already other ways of collecting whatever educational statistics the government may find useful without such a gross infringement on personal liberties.
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