FERPA does not protect student privacy, and never did

Posted on December 26, 2013
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I’ve been debating for a few months on how to tackle this topic in a way that is both informative and engaging while providing firmly grounded sources that back up my analysis. I’ve finally decided that might be too ambitious, and certainly a lot to tackle in a single piece Rather than let anymore grass grow underneath my feet on this issue I decided to jump right in and I’ll be amending and updating my work on this topic much as Congress and US ED as amended FERPA continuously throughout the years. FERPA laws, interpretations and guidance are dense and jargon filled. I will refer to some specific passages, but I will leave it to you delve into those documents directly if you are so inclined. I’ve been asked to synthesize and summarize what I know and have read. If you feel more informed and more concerned after reading this piece I will see my work as successful.

FERPA is old and outdated

FERPA was created in 1974, before much of the current technology, we take for granted today, was even imagined by most legislators (except maybe the creator of the Internet, Al Gore.) As such, the framework is suspect and a patchwork of fixes and amendments that really fails to do what many people think it does. FERPA does not protect student privacy to any real degree, not to the extent we would expect a modern law to do. FERPA was written when many computers were housed in underground facilities on universities campuses (to make cooling them easier) and were the size of houses. Here is a state of the art computer from 1973, a GEC 4000.
And a close up of its