Earlier this month, students at Stanford University ramped up requests for access to their education records with the apparent goal of determining what factors the admissions office used to accept the students. Student requests for access to education records must be complied with under the regulations set by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and must be provided to the student requesting the records within a 45 day period. For more information, check out the story posted in the New York Times.
To shed some more light on the process, we consulted AACRAO Senior Fellow LeRoy Rooker, the former Director of the Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO), which administers FERPA. According to Rooker, there are definitions and conditions which must be properly considered before complying with such requests.
Consider the following questions:
1. Is the material considered an education record? Referencing FERPA, such records include files, documents or other materials which contain information on a student and which are maintained by the institution or an outside agency acting directly under the control of the institution where the student is enrolled.
Admissions files on matriculated students, if they are maintained, would fall under this definition, and so a student would have the right to inspect and review such records within a 45 day period. So long as the institution can provide the student this opportunity, FERPA does not require that the institution provide the student a copy of the requested record. Applicants who were not accepted would not have access to their admissions records under FERPA.
2. Are the education records being maintained by the institution or by an agency acting on behalf of the institution? FERPA does not require institutions to maintain student records – it is a law concerned with the protection and privacy of maintained student educational records. If they are maintained, they generally may be disclosed only to the student or to parties that meet the conditions for any of the exceptions listed in §99.31 of the regulations. However, only requests from the student must be complied with within a 45 day period. Any documents, files, or other material that are not maintained obviously do not meet the definition of education records.
For example, if an institution’s stated or unstated retention and destruction policy is to destroy all admissions records except for the application and the high school transcript once a student enrolls at that institution, then those are the only admissions records that would be education records at that institution. State laws may require institutions maintain certain records, so any institutional policy should factor in any such state laws in addition to their own stated goals in regards to records maintenance.
The issue is not cut and dry – policy rarely is – but the best way to approach these issues is to familiarize oneself with the relevant regulatory language and then determine policies and practices based on that review and understanding. For a more in depth analysis related to this subject, please reference page 249 of the 2012 AACRAO FERPA Guide.
And visit AACRAO's FERPA Compliance page for more information on our FERPA publications, meetings, and FERPA consulting services.