Controversies
FERPA refers to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. It was passed in the year 1974. Importantly, this specific law that applies to the federal government does control the rules and regulations that pertain to the access and disclosure of student records in schools. It is important to note that this particular law does apply to all institutions of education, which normally receive funding from the federal government. It gives students some rights including access to their records, inspecting, reviewing and controlling disclosure to external parties (O'Donnell, 2002). The implementation of this law has opened it to a number of controversies in the past. A lot of these controversies are quite significant that they must be addressed through different means as long as they are worthwhile.
One major controversy of this law in relation to higher education is that many colleges tend to hide behind this law all the time. The law is seriously misunderstood by most colleges and universities. Considering the current rise in cases of sexual assault, the misconduct scandals like drug trafficking in the school and terrorist attacks against other students, the institutions have remained in dilemma regarding the right way of addressing these issues when the investigative bodies come for information about suspect students. The current controversy is accentuated by the fact that critics blame the habit of schools unnecessarily invoking this FERPA law to deny investigative agencies important information about criminal students. There is also the complaint that institutions, which break this law, normally face quite small threat of facing consequences (White, 2013). This specific controversy is informed by the fact that the federal government is yet to ever financially penalize an institution found to breach the FERPA law.
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The highly restrictive nature of FERPA is quite controversial. In essence, a college or university cannot give out information about a student unless he or she permits it through writing or only in exceptional events described in the law.
Initially, FERPA was only applicable to the academic information of a student. However, the U.S. Congress did amendments to it, which significantly expanded the records to which it is applicable. The Congress included any record that bears the name of the student. By this particular provision, the Congress opened FERPA to controversy where it started to become a scapegoat for hiding student information from schools. Today, virtually all the documents that bear the name of a student are regarded as protected by FERPA.
Moreover, the increase of exceptions in which the school can release student information also did water down the effect of FERPA. Today, there are 6 exceptions in which a school may release student records to external parties. However, many schools use these exceptions to release private information about students without their consent. There is, therefore, high need for fixing this particular law.
Correcting the issues
The solution to the current controversies surrounding FERPA is simply amendment of the law. The Congress needs to amend the FERPA law with a view of including provisions, which give it force in terms of penalizing schools that breach it (White, 2013). Importantly, the FERPA law should categorically state the terms of the penalties to be slapped on those who breach the law. Moreover, this FERPA should be limited to specific highly private records such as the academic documents of students. There is no need of making its application so wide that it becomes a scapegoat for denying important information to those who genuinely need it. Finally, the exceptions included in the FERPA law currently must be reduced from the level of 16 to eliminate the window for its breach by institutions of higher education.
References
O'Donnell, M. L. (2002). FERPA: Only a piece of the privacy puzzle. JC & UL , 29 , 679.
White, L. (2013). Don’t like FERPA? Change the law. Chronicle of Higher Education , 59 (18), A22.
