Feds Propose National Database of College Students 825
Dore writes "The Department of Education wants to collect personally identifiable information on all college students, including name, address, birth date, gender, race, and SSN. Privacy is assured. The No Child Left Behind Act, which holds primary and secondary schools accountable prompted this line of thinking. Now colleges should be held accountable. If you made it to college, you were not left behind, and further attempts at monitoring citizens should be."
Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh? Well, that certainly clears things up, no privacy concerns then, its not like anyone bribeable will have access to it...
goal (Score:1, Interesting)
What are their justifications?
let's include professors, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:... Now that Napster is Gone (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Privacy problems, yes, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll never have a complete say over where your tax dollars go, but this is one case where I think the inherent systems will succeed in assuring that the worthy receive your contributions. We don't need more restrictive measures put into place.
No end in sight (Score:1, Interesting)
My wife is a nurse and when i wait for her to get out of work I kind of listen to them and check out the profesional journals; I saw an artical about a doctor who stood on client, patient confidentiality and he went to jail, but I dont remember what mag it was or the issue, but I will not go to the doctors anymore!
The Government still Pays (Score:2, Interesting)
The government spends billions every year on Higher education.
When I invest in something I expect to see measured results, on a regular basis. Don't you? So why is it unreasonable for the Gov't to expect this?
Furthermore, as a TAXPAYER, *I* am entitled to see statisitics about the performance of universities that I HELP FUND.
I might also find this information useful when choosing a University.
Re:Whoah! (Score:5, Interesting)
a plausible reason (Score:1, Interesting)
plus, a bonus for stalkers - get a low-level govt job and gain access, probably for life!
Let's hope they draft young republicans first.
Better Dead Than Red (State)
It might be worse than you know... (Score:5, Interesting)
An early attempt to control colleges (Score:1, Interesting)
First, you make participation with this database mandatory.
Second, you single out particularly "low" achieving colleges using this database and force them into a government made program of study, threatening to cut funding if they do not cooperate.
Third, you make public comments about how much those initial colleges improved, and make a powerful push towards getting all colleges to accept this plan, again threatening to cut funding if they do not cooperate.
Fourth, you gradually weaken the college curriculum until it is impossible to get an education there.
Fifth, you sit back and enjoy yourself, having made colleges just as pathetic as high school now is.
Public schools aren't benevolent; they're designed to erode the minds of their students and to prevent them from becoming strong and upstanding individuals. Colleges, however, aren't quite there yet - and the Department of Education wants them there.
Who's money is it anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
That ummm, who provides?
I don't want a university system that it tied to the agenda of our federal officials.
There is a cost to not monitoring individuals and I for one am willing to pay it.
Re:goal (Score:2, Interesting)
i'm slightly confused by their spurious argument; i understand how transfers would show up as dropouts in one column, but shouldn't they then show up as transfers in another? they say something about how students then end up not appearing to graduate from any institution...if these are school-reported statistics, then the school they graduate from would report that, right? i feel like i'm missing something here.
Re:Let the trouble-makers drop-out (Score:2, Interesting)
And not a few of us dropped out to avoid trouble and to improve our learning, took our GEDs and were in college a year ahead of our graduating class.
There are all sorts of valid reasons for leaving government school at 16, or even before that.
KFG
Re:Unnecessary data! (Score:2, Interesting)
Their only bottleneck was the specific paper punch cards made by ibm which couldnt be 'cloned' very well, so IBM had the monopoly supply.
Anyway, German efforts in France were scuttled by some good French resistence (dont bag them, at least they DIDNT SELL the damn machines to Germany like USA did). The French resistence pretended to offer counting/tab services to the germans, but gave them fake info and used the machines for themselves to keep track of all the resistence groups/underground soldiers and what each one can do etc...
So gathering large amounts of info/stats on people can have a dual role for both evil and good against evil. Today with 1000000x more procesing power, everyone is basically property of the goverment as a 'resource' that supplies taxes.
Re:Let the trouble-makers drop-out (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was 16, I was about ready to drop out of high school. I wasn't learning anything useful, most of my teachers had bad attitudes, and I couldn't take any classes that actually interested me (apart from a visual art class with an excellent teacher). I had a 1.0 GPA my last semester at high school (3 0.0 and 1 4.0 averaged).
Fortunately, my state has a program that allows HS students to do their last two years at a community college, so I was able to learn about things like astronomy and logic, and take government and sociology courses from teachers who were interested in the subjects and knew how to teach them well.
I never got a four-year degree, but on my way towards one I got into IT and now I work as a systems engineer at a Fortune 500 company. I start school again in about a month (after a six year hiatus) to earn a BS and possibly go further in another field.
There are a lot of 16-year-olds who are genuinely uninterested in learning, but many of the people I knew had been failed by the public education system the same way I would have been without that community college program.
Or No Child Un-Recruied. (Score:2, Interesting)
The effort to create this database may be in response to the recent judgement that universities can deny access to military recruiters [concordmonitor.com] because of discriminatory practices against gays. This overturned a 1994 a defense authorization bill that allowed the goverment to withhold funding from public institutions that denied access to recruiters.
The hopeless war in iraq is making it more difficult [tucsoncitizen.com] to recruit a new generation [newsobserver.com] of jarheads. Retention is down so they were forced to make do with a back door draft in order to retain enough personel to maintain our insufficient forces in iraq & afganastan. If bush starts a third war against Iran(with large oil and natural gas reserves), launched from our spiffy new bases in Iraq, we will need to dramatically increase the number of military personel beyond what can be build using volenteers. This new database will come in handy when the National Freedom Expanders Act is passed to compel military service unless you happen to be in a rich an powerful family in which case reporting for Patriot Duty is optional.
Better make sure they get some social skills (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, as much as you instictively want to protect them from the big bad world, going too far could really screw them up. The super-sheltered kids I know are almost to the individual annoying, and have difficulty adjusting to new environments (i.e. college).
Re:The goals are several. Read between the lines. (Score:3, Interesting)
And if that college is university is state run that number drops to 0%. Registering is mandatory if student is going to a school that's public.
Re:goal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let the trouble-makers drop-out (Score:2, Interesting)
You see them as babies and have little interest in caring about them, prefering to spend money elsewhere.
By chance did you ever read any of this ?
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.
It's your sort of attitude towards today's youth in highschool from teachers that brings about some of the above feelings and commentary within the aforementioned article.
FYI, Highschool is a special sort of hell. It's like a war of attrition, for the geeks as much as it is for every other student going through it as well. Being surrounded by teachers and school administrators who're out of touch with their students, as well as jaded about them being babies and lost causes is what draws out school violence when the students reach the breaking point of being unable to find anyone compassionate enough to understand their issues as well as work with them.
Do i suggest that it's an easy road? No, but one thing is for certain, it highlights how much more involved high school teaching is today, than just giving lectures to politely obedient students. Who only care about learning the subject matter. Who politely leave their personal lives outside the building.
Instead of being understanding or trying to, and working with the students you would rather cast them aside, letting them walk out into the harsh realities of life outside of school unprepared. Money better spent elsewhere.
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"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose." - Chapter 25, pg. 204, Catcher in the Rye
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Re:YOU FAILT IT (Score:1, Interesting)
Now see? That's exactly what they're expecting you to do...Ignorance is power!
$30,000 tin foil hats (Score:2, Interesting)
As an ex-programmer for a university, and then a major player in the higher education software application market, I have been involved in the creation of the REAL existing student tracking database. It is NOT FAFSA, and it DOES contain personal identification data. Any institution that receives grant or loan money from publically funded programs is REQUIRED to identify and report EVERY student enrolled at least once per enrollment period (semester/quarter). In the industry it is known as the Federal student loan clearinghouse. Its stated purpose is to insure against fraudulent applications, receipt, and use of student loan and grant monies. I assure you that the folks running the show weren't qualified to design the collection system, nor are they sophisticated enough to use it to track your association to terrorist organizations (except if you count U.C. Berkley to be one). I can also assure you that they HAVE prevented the federal loan and grant programs from funding your 7th-year freshman roommates sports-car purchase. Dont ask me to count how many times I've seen the junior with the 1.2 G.P.A. drop out in the third week of the semester and try to withdraw the $20,000 of student loan money they thought no-one would notice. Before you take to much pride in your tin-foil hats, ask around and find out how much they have collected from ex-students who CLAIM to be full-time students so they can delay the repayment of thier $60,000 in student loans. There are MILLIONS of reasons why both public and private instituions are willing to give this information up, and every single one of them has to do with making sure the federal funding of higher education doesn't look like the $300,000 toilets the pentagon uses to flush taxpayer money away.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:2, Interesting)
You're an idiot if you don't understand that.
The US was regarded as a nation of cowboys before it benefited from German and other scientists.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure I would link Al Qaida to the the U.S. government though you never know. You would think they would have managed to catch Bin Laden by now if they were trying.
I think they are probably more like a pet that's gone bad and bites the hand of the one who fed it. Manueal Noriega, former head of Panama was like that too. He was a CIA stooge until he turned on them and we invaded Panama to take him down. He is rotting in Federal pen now.
I will have to agree the Republicans and the Bush administration have benefited mightily from 9/11 and Al Qaida whomever they answer to. Bush was heading towards a truly mediocre one term presidency before 9/11 save him.
They couldn't have gotten away with any of shit they've pulled without it:
- Jacking defense and intelligence up to a half trillion a year
- The Patriot Act
- Invading Iraq
- Scaring the American people so bad that they reelected him despite a record of incompetence and abuse that has most of the world despising the U.S.
- Destroying our rights to due process i.e. arresting people indefinitely with out charges or trial and subjecting them to varying degress of torture.
And coming soon:
- National ID cards, if we are lucky, with RFID tags so we can all be tracked every minute
- Merging the CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA and part of the FBI in to one all seeing all powerful spying agency, free to spy on Americans and foreigners alike, that would be the envy of the old KGB and Richard Nixon.
- Changes in the Senate rules so they can appoint extremist judges with a simple majority followed by "rule changes" to eliminate the fillibuster so Democrats can't stop them from passing their extremist agenda. Once the courts are packed and the Democrats in the Senate castrated we will have a "democraticly" elected dictatorship.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:2, Interesting)
I recently watched a Dijkstra video wherein he relates he had to come to America for decent technology growth. Go figure if the USA fits that bill today! Surely nobody can argue that the USA is growing anywhere near the rate of China or even India. Mayhap the American dream has expatriated as well.
-- http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/videos/Noorder
On the subject of freedom, ever boil a frog? One has to wonder what all those Jews were thinkning staying in Germany and those Ukrainians in Ukraine in the early '40's. Guess they never saw their rights slipping into the hands of the government until it was too late. Even as the forward-thinkers may have been able to escape Germany and the surrounding area, are people yet escaping America?
Without a doubt, the upper 0.5% have moved substantial parts of their assets ex-USA. Guess Bill Gates is the most well-informed person in the world and that explains his investment in India instead of the USA.
Once the WTO takes over (already has been granted immigration authority over the USA which is quite interesting as this was a key point the states reserved in the Constitution for a period) then will citizens of the USA even be able to point to consitutional rights? Surely Ammendment X of the Bill of Rights of the Consitution of America expressly deny much of the authority the USA government claims and without a doubt absolutely deny WTO and other world government authority over citizens of the USA.
Only a complete dismissal of the Constitution would legalize the current governance of the WTO. The dismissal has come in the form of "might is right" and double-speak on behalf of the USA government.
Oh well, you pay your money and place your bets. For now, the USA is the best and we still can voice our opinions openly. Unlike China!
Re:Several. (Score:4, Interesting)
*Note: My guess about student visa restrictions.
No need to spend tax dollars. See student loans. (Score:3, Interesting)
College students should worry about their privacy, because I know that Sallie Mae outsources their service/call center, and current laws are vague about the legalities of this. Imagine all your personal information accessible halfway across the world by god knows who? Sure the internet does this already, but how secure is Sallie Mae's systems? If the government wants to spend dollars where it's worth it, then spend it on auditing Sallie Mae and their practices, to ensure that students are treated fairly.
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:3, Interesting)
For that reason alone, when America gets involved in anyones' business, be it for good reasons or bad, people don't trust them. It would be different if America didn't abuse the trust of other nations.