Contact your Senators today to oppose proposed federal database tracking college grads through life!

 

A bill called the College Transparency Act is being considered by the Senate HELP committee. It would overturn the prohibition against the federal government collecting personally identifiable student information and instead would authorize the creation of a new federal database to track all students enrolled in a higher education institution throughout their lives, including their enrollment status, attendance, age, gender, and race.

This data would then be aggregated with information held by other federal agencies after students leave college, through agreements with the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Census Bureau, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Federal Student Aid, and potentially other agencies over time as well. An article from Straight Arrow News lays out the pros and cons.

Whatever guardrails to protect student privacy and anonymity in the current bill could easily be weakened over time, or violated, with the data used to target current and former students simply because they are members of a disfavored racial, ethnic, religious, or other vulnerable group.  

This bill has been introduced in Congress several times, and the organization I co-chair, the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, has been opposing its passage since 2017. In our current political situation, it is clearer than ever the serious harm that creating such a database poses.

We have already seen how the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE team have trampled on the privacy rights of individuals for their own political ends, and how the administration is pushing for unprecedented levels of consolidating personal information across federal, state and private databases for purposes of surveillance and retribution.

Please call your Senators today to let them know they should oppose the College Transparency Act as a dangerous and unwarranted violation of privacy, and also email them by sending them this message. If you belong to an organization, urge them to sign onto our letter in opposition here, by filling out this form.

Then share this email with other parents, students, concerned citizens, and organizations concerned about protecting the privacy rights of all of us. Any questions, you can respond to this message and/or contact us at the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy at info@studentprivacymatters.org. But please do this today!

Thanks Leonie