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...
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jaysyn
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is paranoia. They can't tell who made it to college and who didn't if they don't know one or the other. It'll be hard to collect the identities of kids that didn't go to college, wouldn't it? So they have to get the names of those who did.
As for a draft and all that other stuff...they already know when you turn 18 because they know your b-day when you get your SSN. If they wanted to auto-register you for the selective service, they already know everything they need to know to do that.
We can't say
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
The question isn't one of logistics as you seem to indicate, it's one of privacy. For example, it would be hard to collect the names of people who didn't go to a gay pride parade, so therefore they *have to* collect the names (and SSN, and birthday, and...) of those who did.
The real issue isn't "What's the best way to collect it?", the issue is "Why the hell is the government collecting this information?" Universities and colleges already know who their students are, given that students have to enroll. But why should the government start collecting lists? Churches and synagogues know who their members are too, but the government doesn't so let's start listing out all synagogue members. No Jew left behind either!
Re:Privacy is assured...what privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
We probably have more real privacy today than ever before. Some people seem to want total anonymity, and that's never existed.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our K-12 education is broken. Our university systems work very well. We have the best universities in the world. Look at the list of top 50 universities. Look at the number of international students who study at universities in the US.
While K-12 education in the US is very poor, university education is very good. Why? The political process has (mostly) left universities alone while they (local school boards, state boards of education, federal agencies, etc.) have been making public education a political football. If you want to ruin undergraduate and graduate education and academic research in the US, simply let the government become more involved in the university education system.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not interested in individuals. The govt's interested in assessing which school districts and sending kids on to college. That's it. That's what this whole thing is about.
If they're allowed to trace the path of kids through the school system, then they'll have good data on how the public education system is doing in terms of percentage of kids that graduate and go on to institutions of higher learning. Without that data, they have no way of knowing if they're making any progress as they implement
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a two step program to crater your economy:
- Let your primary and secondary education system crater(bad underpaid teachers, promoting everyone, huge dropout rate, prioritize athletics and athletes over academics).
-Drive away all the top flight well educated foreign students and professors America has become so dependent on especially in science and tech.
Al Qaida's plan to destroy America seems to be working pretty well, launch one spectacular attack and let brain dead politicians and law enforcement officers do the rest of the damage as they seek to make everyone "safe".
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think there are few more steps involved, but this is a good start when coupled with research restrictions (e.g., stem cells). Making sure all the cool future tech (bio, mechanical, or otherwise) is imported into the US will do wonders for destroying the economy. And since the poor are much more attracted to religions, it's a solid win for those working toward our (USA) budding theocracy.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Funny)
In America we spend money on vaccines for small pox and Anthrax and we don't have enough flu vaccine.
In America we are going to spend hundreds of millions on a nationwide grid of biochemical warfare sensors.
In America we will spend $200 billion and counting on a misguided war in Iraq instead of on education and research.
In America we overturn the theory of evolution in favor of creationism and try to claim the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old and was created by the great flood.
I always wondered what it would be like to live in the Dark Ages.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:3, Insightful)
The primary and secondary education is already cratered, and has been for years. Despite that, the current educators resist ANY change at all, because it would actually make them accountab
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it was from the excellent Charlie Rose show on PBSU interviewing a guy who wrote a book on why America is losing its competitive edge, don't remember his name. Charlie Rose does some good interviews, way better than the big networks though he tends to be a little liberal for the right wing nutcases.
If you want I can dig up some references. The guy said applications for graduate schools are way up at U of Toronto and Oxford partially because its a long hard slog just to get a visa to study in the U.S. since 9/11, I think he said it take a year or more now.
The recent election statistics also show the highly educated trend heavily against the right wing nutcases who currently run the U.S.
Anecdotally I've read a lot of posts here on Slashdot, from people who've said they would never think of coming to the U.S. anymore to live, work, study or go to conferences because its become so onerous to enter the U.S., secret dont fly and arrest immediately lists full of bogus names, and there have been to many well documented instances of people being arrested and subjected to various degrees of torture(often after being sent to countries who are good at toture). The one case I remember most vividly was a Canadian resident who was just flying through New York to Canada, who was pulled off a plan and was deported to Syria where he was tortured for a year until the Canadians finally found and extricated him.
Another good one was Cat Stevens, having his flight diverted and being detained as a terrorist, like the guy that wrote "Peace Train" [lyricsdepot.com] is an imminent threat to America. Though now that I think about it someone advocating "Peace" might be a threat to the people who run America these days.
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:3, Informative)
I was at CRYPTO this year (a top-flight crypto conference, held every year at UCSB in california). A student's visa to come into the country to present her own paper was held up so long she couldn't even make it to the conference. Why? Because crypto is apparently threatening, even when it's public
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, of course, is true; quite clearly, you don't go to jail for accessing news.google.com/en, for instance. :-)
Cant find it online, but th
Re:Privacy is assured. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can kind of see your point though. America is fast moving beyond the point it needs or wants people who think, reference a recent Tuesday in November.
Its a really big thing lately in the media to cover the religious right as they use their new political clout to try to undo the theory of evolution, geology and science. They forced the people who run the Grand Canyon book store to include a book that claims the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old and was created by the great flood
America is in for a world of hurt as it continues to rush to abandon science in favor of religious zealotry.
Several. (Score:5, Insightful)
(2) It feeds our skilled workforce. Many people who are educated here elect to stay. If you agree that top-flight people are worth having around, than this is good.
(3) It facillitates idea exchange. Folks at school learn from each other, sometimes more than fromtheir professors. I can't think of a downside here.
(4) It builds international connections. People who went to school together tend to stay in contact. They make business deals, diplomatic relations, and generally help countries understand each other.
If that really isn't enough for you, look to history for what happens to nations that become myopic. Don't think it won't happen here, unless you're prepared to explain how the U.S. is different from every other empire in history.
Re:Several. (Score:4, Interesting)
*Note: My guess about student visa restrictions.
Re:Confusion assured? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. China's pegging the Renmibi to the US Dollar drags down the Renmibi, enabling the flux of cheap made-in-China goods to the United States. However, a poor US dollar is good for American manufacturers because that in turn makes it a whole lot easier for American exports. But it's definitely in favor of China. If the Renmibi were floated, the price of Chinese-made goods would skyrocket (China right now is like America in the Roaring 20's), an
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:3, Informative)
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I agree. With China economically ascendant and the US hooked on Asian debt relief, it will be helpful to know the names of our future bosses.
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorist threats aside, there is a lot of stuff being blatantly ripped off by Chinese students and professional technical people. China is "economically ascendent" (i.e. "becoming a high-tech society") but they sure as hell didn't do it all by themselves: neither did Japan for that matter. We gave Japan their head start after the Second World War but we made no such gift to China
I know a company where a Chinese engineer was hired during development of a significant piece of technology. He worked there until the project was completed, then stole the prototype and flew home to China the same night and gave it to a manufacturer on the Chinese mainland (where it turned out he was still employed.) Frankly, that should have been an international incident, but I assume the management of that company didn't want the embarrassment. I know several other similar cases (I was in and out of a lot of places as a consultant for many years.) Obviously Chinese immigrants to the U.S. aren't much of a terrorism threat (the Chinese engineers I know are generally damn good, but are hardly terrorists), but I certainly do see some of them as being very capable (and culpable) with regard to industrial espionage.
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:5, Insightful)
So get off your high horse, because that is how all industrial nations (except britain, who had the first mover disadvantage...go read your economics books) started.
As to the rest of your xenophobic post...wow, you really don't get how the world works. Or has worked for the past couple of centuries.
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:3, Informative)
When the U.S. got started there was no international patent or copyright law. British inventions were protected by export controls with very large criminal penalties.
Dickens argued for copyright protection in his american tour of 1842. This was
Re:National Database for Only Foreign Students (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously intended as flamebait, but such a database exists: SEVIS - Student and Exchange Visitor Information System [ice.gov]
The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is a web-based system for maintaining information on international students and exchange visitors in the United States. Administered by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
SEVIS is designed to keep our nation safe while facilitating the entry and exit process for foreign students in the United States and for students seeking to study in the United States.
To Americans today, "keeping our nation safe" is synonymous with trusting government to act in our best interests. How have so many failed to learn the lessons so clearly taught by our nation's founders, that the government is the enemy of liberty?
Re:YOU FAILT IT (Score:4, Insightful)
people will get used to it (for example: radar detectors cops use to catch speeders, phone wire taps the FBI has the power to setup), and not all at once... it'll just be the norm, even convenient at each little interval. But, take a snapshot of today, and compare it to 30 years from now, and you'll probably feel like you've stepped into a utopia novel without ever realizing that you were doing it.
... Now that Napster is Gone (Score:5, Funny)
Crispin
Re:... Now that Napster is Gone (Score:3, Informative)
renamed (Score:5, Funny)
What? (Score:2, Funny)
The US federal government has proposed creating a national database to track people?? STOP THE PRESSES!!
I mean, really... do we NEED to track every little thing someone does? How about a national database for tracking when everyone uses the restroom. We could put little sensors on all toilets to track how often they're flushed!
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a prototype here [mit.edu].
- shadowmatter
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
We could call it "No Behind Left Behind."
Good thing the Republicans are in charge (Score:5, Funny)
See! With the Republicans in charge, we can be positive that States and Localities will gain strength and that the federal government's power is limite....oh, wait. Never mind.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that exists and yet does not extend to college level, one has to wonder why this is being proposed.
Also I can't see any real benefits (eg. in terms of missing persons) of this scheme. Anybody would like to think up some?
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Let the trouble-makers drop-out (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former public school teacher, I can tell you that by the time they're 16 they're plenty able to cause trouble. And if they want to drop out, it's very unlikely that forcing them to stay in will cause them to learn anything. The only reason to keep them in would be as a public-funded baby-sitting service, and I can think of better ways to spend our tax money. Sometimes I think that we should let them drop out in 9th grade (I taught 9th grade physical science - a general/remedial level science course - my last year as a teacher, and it was no coincidence that it was my last year. I have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers that keep at it year after year after year.). However, some of the kids in 9th grade, might actually straighten up. Those who are 16, however, are very unlikely to straighten up by 18. Once they've been out in the "real world", there is a slightly greater chance that they will see the errors of their ways, in which case they can go to night school and/or get their GED.
Re:Let the trouble-makers drop-out (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who are 16, however, are very unlikely to straighten up by 18
Yeah, I had a public school teacher like you when I was 16...that's why my kids will only ever go to a private school. You have failed every student you have ever thought that about. Thank god my parents recognised the damage that attitude can have and yanked me out of public into private...where my grades soared, I went from D average to B's and A's and got accepted to Uni studying GeoPhysics...and so on and so on...I'm now extremely successful, however I'd probably be pumping gas now if my parents hadn't gotten me away from teachers with attitudes like yours.
Re:TROLL (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
Does this sentence make sense to anyone else around here? Or rather...
This sentence make sense to anyone else around here does?
Whoah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted not a lot of people finish college, but a great deal start.. and the idea that the government feels the need to keep track of me in yet another way is outragious..
By the time we get to college, we're in charge of making sure we succeed, not the government
Re:Whoah! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet another list... (Score:4, Insightful)
let's include professors, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Colleges Accountable?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
No further legislation needed. (Also keep in mind we're talking about college students-- legal adults. Creating a No Child Left Behind-like database has more legal problems to consider.)
Re:Colleges Accountable?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I'm normally one of the people saying 'so what', but in this case I don't agree with a national database that includes names and social security numbers. Instead just have a database that anonymously tracks which HS a student came from and what grade they've achieved in college, as well as if they have a degree or not. Much simpler database and it'll achieve all of the same things.
are getting for our investment in higher educatio (Score:5, Insightful)
public school? i.e. community colleges- defensible.. private institutions? none of their damn business.
Random sample (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government doesn't go for this proposal, I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
Tracking (Score:3, Insightful)
> I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.
Educated people, on the average, are able to think critically.
Educated people, on the average, are less swayed by patriotic-sounding FUD.
Educated people, on the average, are harder to control.
Ergo, we should keep close tabs on people who wish to get an education.
If we know what they study, how successful they are and their personal and financial data, we could decide whether we prefer to use them for our purposes, ignore them or make them quiet.
Unnecessary data! (Score:5, Informative)
Under the new system proposed by the National Center for Education Statistics at the Department of Education, each student enrolled in college would have a computer record that included name, address, birth date, gender, race, and Social Security number. It would then track field of study, credits, tuition paid, and financial aid received and would follow the student if he or she transferred or dropped out and later reenrolled.
Why does name, address, birth date, gender, race and Social Security have to do with this obstensible goals? An anonymous survey could be effective to gain whatever information they can possibly hope to gain from this system. They seem to be concerned with transfer students, but these could just be tracked without private information being encoded in a databse! This is a rediculous move, and probably just another move for a more complete database of civilian's private information.
Perhaps some staticians could shed some light on what this study hopes to achieve, and why personal data is required?
Kind of makes you wish... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine... (Score:5, Funny)
1. It's searchable by name, location, major and gender
2. It includes pictures
3. You can rate each person
zerg (Score:5, Funny)
college not the same as public school (Score:4, Insightful)
Having over 6 teachers in my immediate family and once concidering the profession. no child left behind is a useless inititive. Why have a program that looks great but puts requirements on schoool programs without giving them the funding to reach said goals. The problem has never been documenting who gets behind, but ensuring that the school budget gets funded and passed before you fund prisons and roads. getting back to the problem why doesn't the government solve the public school problem before they take on colleges.
Re:college not the same as public school (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be worse than you know... (Score:5, Interesting)
NCLB is an absolute failure (Score:5, Informative)
He loves teaching. Through high school he coached younger kids in soccer. He has a rare gift for it.
He hates his job. There aren't books for the kids. There isn't paper for the copiers - unless he buys it. Basically, he has no materials for the majority of the classes he teaches.
His school is being punished by NCLB. They have reduced funding because they have not met minimum test score standards. Why haven't they? Because their students come from poverty and the school itself is underfunded. There are four computers in his classroom - no mice or keyboards, all broken and never replaced. How can you expect the students to be serious about education when you're not serious about giving them one? They know its a joke - they know rich kids go to schools with books and paper and they have nothing.
If you fail to meet minimum testing standards, you are given a bit of money, as any NCLB proponent will point out. This money is for basic math and reading courses. Funding for nearly all other programs is revoked. This means that teachers begin teaching for the test as to try to get their funding back. Teaching for tests is short sighted and ultimately doesn't teach the higher order thinking needed to advance in life.
He is not a teacher but a disciplinarian. He is forced to spend his time with problem students rather than helping and rewarding the good ones.
While NCLB has the nice ideal of encouraging better schools, it ultimate takes money away from those that need it the most. It further emphasizes the lack of access to education that the poor suffer.
This might be semi off topic, but I think people should know waht NCLB is like from the inside.
Take off the Tin Foil and Think. (Score:3, Insightful)
Government does subsidize higher education, saving students billions every year.
These are our tax dollars that they're shipping off to universities and I think we (the tax payers) do have a right to know what's being done with it.
If a university has a 75% drop-out rate should they be funded the same as, less then or more then a university with a 5% drop-out rate? That's worthy of debate, something not possible without this data.
Re:Take off the Tin Foil and Think. (Score:5, Informative)
If your college disclosed your records to your parents w/o your consent, sue them.
Before you say "no way", read an overview of the law.
FERPA [ed.gov] From the department of ed website:
"FERPA gives parents certain rights with respect to their children's education records. These rights transfer to the student when he or she reaches the age of 18 or attends a school beyond the high school level."
"Generally, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a student's education record."
Note that nosy parents is not a valid exemption.
This is the natural outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
Why duplicate their other databases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that the Federal Gov't already has all of this information and needn't waste any more taxpayer dollars trying to aquire it again.
Note that I'm not trying to justify their attempts at data-collection (far from it, actually), I'm just pointing out that they already have that information for most of us already.
Government officials and employees (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I'll happily contribute my own entry from my (brief) period as a government contractor.
Makes Perfect Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I started out to be sarcastic with this. The more I look at it, the less sure of that I am.
no professor left behind (Score:5, Funny)
Fear not (Score:3, Insightful)
I just can't see any problem. There is no privacy to lose any more. Why should I care about federal registers while credit card companies know everything I buy, my ISP knows where I spend my time and those smart fellows who keep closest APT repository online know my favorite editor. Probably I couldn't even do moon shine without getting into dozen registers.
We are filed way beyond anything my glorious filehappy homeland can imagine.
Isn't it nice?
Obligatory suggestion for new law (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon to a Congress near you! (Only available within the US.)
What if... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Yes, but... (Score:3, Funny)
What about a "appeared recently in 'Gilrs Gone Wild?'" flag?
Already have this kind of... (Score:3, Informative)
My mom had me fingerprinted as a kid (Score:3, Funny)
Damn (Score:3, Informative)
National Directory of New Hires (Score:3, Informative)
Dear Federal Government (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Jame
Reason of doing a College Student Database (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, unlike Nam's time, people who is smart enough getting into college will also be drafted to the military. Military needs a lot of electrical engineers and programmers too.
good f***ing lord! this govt is not conservative (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
"Privacy is assured..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:goal (Score:2, Informative)
Re:goal (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: "The idea, proposed by a research wing of the Department of Education, is designed to improve federal oversight of students' enrollment rates, graduation rates, and tuition. Currently, that information is provided only in summary form by universities, leaving gaps in national college statistics. When students transfer from one college to another, for example, they show up in the federal rolls as dropouts."
Apparently, metrics on student graduation rates are the lifeblood of our government. We can't tolerate even small inaccuracies.
(Of course, we can tolerate small inaccuracies in, say, our voting system. But that's just a different story.)
I can't imagine any legitimate purpose for this. Even if you argue that the government allocates public university funding based on education rates, the aggregate metrics generated by each institution should be more than sufficient. If a university isn't providing accurate data, then you need to force it to comply - not usurp its job with hideous spyware.
I imagine that the real purpose is to track foreign students at American universities. In fact, the government does have a legitimate purpose in monitoring, say, Iranian exchange students who are studying nuclear physics. But I can't imagine why they wouldn't bolt that duty to visa enforcement, rather than just brazenly spying on the population.
- David Stein
Re:goal (Score:5, Funny)
The goals are several. Read between the lines. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of stupid responses here. "To improve accountability". "RTFA". Nonsense. RBTL (Read between the lines).
My bet is that the primary goal here is to track down draft-age men and women; specifically those who were smart enough not to enter into the draft database by voluntarily registering.
Another clear goal is to make it easier to keep tabs on dissendents. Colleges are usually the first place where protests happen; so it makes it a lot easier to identify and keep tabs on the troublemakers.
My, the government sure is going all out to gather and centralize all this data about the people it supposedly represents. I wonder what for?
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:The goals are several. Read between the lines. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Foreign Students (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Foreign Students (Score:4, Funny)
US students, of which nobody will ever be a terrorist, should be tracked for other reasons like to figure out what will become of them once they grow up and whether the investment on them has paid off. I propose we implant an RFID tag under the scalp of each US student. That way the Government could easily scan them at every opportunity.
It is important that we know what young people do with their lives. After all, they could become terrorists some day! Or eat children! Or even, heaven forbid, violate copyright laws! We MUST know what they're up to.
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.
Re:The solution! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about keeping a database of... (Score:5, Insightful)
He thinks its bad in college, wait til he gets out in the real
world and "they" realize he is a work horse, and that is how they
will treat him
The ol' Sled Dog routine as I call it
Anyone that thinks they can off load some job on him will try
it direct and if that does not work they go suck up to your
boss and get him to pan it off on you
I used to have the work hard ethic while in corporate america
but put it on hold eventually in companies where this
pass the buck routine was rampant
Now that I own my own business, I can work hard, and only I am
gonna dump work on myself, and at least I get credit for it
Good Luck to all college students about to enter the work force
Consulting or Incorporation is the way to go , get your
tax deductions up front, and shelter your income
Peace !
Ex-MislTech
Re:The Government still Pays (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paranoia (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct in this matter -- but the problem is that we'll never know who in the future will have that data. Yes, we're a Republic, but we still stand the chance of electing officals that are absolutely horrible to the populace. Hitler was elected by the populace! That crap can and has happened. The less information the Federal government has the better.
They absolutely must prove that under no circumstances can they do their jobs without said data for me to reliquish it.
Nowhere in the Constitution is education mentioned. They have NO business in it and they have NO reason to collect data on the matter. I don't want the feds knowing what college classes I took, what guns I may own, what my sexual preference is, or how much money I made. It's none of their damned business frankly.
I think this sentiment is a big reason why most of the US population, ufortunately, and the world at large, fails to understand WHY privacy/liberty advocates rally against the above bullcrap.
Simply put Federal government is a problem by it's very nature. If you disagree I would urge you to read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers penned by the Founders of the US. The Anti-Federalists simply stated, through a series of papers, that the Federal government would grow out of control and gather more powers than delegated. The Federalists figured a strict Constitution would hold it in check. Well, the Anti-Federalists were right. An issue such as this wouldn't have even surfaces if they weren't.
We're not certain that such a violation would happen -- but it is a possibility. Are you certain that I would misuse your personal information? Well -- how about you fax over your bank records and receipts for everything you purchased in the past few months. I'll maybe help you sort out your budget. You're not certain I'll misuse the information after all. How about your diet and excersise schedules? Send 'em on over -- I'll aggregate the data to make a perfet diet/excercise routine for the populace after a while. It's for the common good, you know.
Re:Benjamin Franklin: wisdom of the ages and natio (Score:3, Informative)