Education Database
…the Bush Administration’s Commission of the Future of Higher Education, to essentially create a national data base of secondary-level student records, caught my eye. The commission wants to compel colleges and universities to provide each student’s academic, financial aid and enrollment data – right down to attendance records – to an organization that would allegedly use the data to build a huge database capable of tracking – at least initially – about 17 million university students. Add into this soup a student’s K-12 data, and even their career path, and we’ll be able to track students alright. Practically from cradle to retirement.
The Education Department claims the data can be used to better test educational theories and set spending priorities. Some proponents claim the data can be used to grade an individual college’s performance, track college transfer students and drop out rates at specific schools. Or, the data collected could be used to determine whether financial aid pays off.
Keeping the principle of “information wants to be free” in mind – the government gaining access to the full data of the prime demographic without any payoff to said demographic does not seem like a good idea.
-Shlok
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