Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Beyond Compliance, Cecelia Parks

Library Publications

Privacy is governed by an array of laws in the United States, and this paper examines one facet of privacy regulation: the privacy of students’ academic records. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of these records, but how do students understand their rights under FERPA, especially with the development of big data and learning analytics technologies that demand unprecedented sharing of student data? This paper begins to answer that question by examining existing literature on privacy in general and with regards to FERPA specifically. It suggests that FERPA places most of the power in controlling …