Links for 5/11/10

Katja Grace

when we can’t compare something, we assume it is better than average

Tim Ranzetta

so, if the students had in fact been lied to, the industry's chief lobbyist proposes the government wipe out their debt...hmmmm...sounds like a wonderful solution...so the school keeps the money, the students get their debt forgiven and the taxpayer gets soaked…

SIMON ROMERO

Mr. Mockus. He became well known in 1993 after dropping his trousers and mooning an auditorium of unruly students, forcing him to resign as rector of the National University.

Frank D. LoMonte

Congress enacted the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, in 1974 to safeguard the confidentiality of student "educational records." But today colleges are abusing Ferpa and denying information requests with no conceivable privacy interest—applying a limitless definition of "educational record" well beyond what Ferpa's sponsors intended…

The U.S. Department of Education should be ensuring the integrity of Ferpa by insisting on a rational interpretation that balances the competing priorities of openness and privacy. But it has abdicated that role… the Education Department should act with regard for the overwhelming mandate of state legislatures that—absent a compelling justification for secrecy—government records are to be open for public inspection…

last year involving the records of a $1.6-million "discretionary scholarship" program at the University of Central Arkansas. The university's former president reportedly directed the scholarships to relatives of trustees and politicians. The institution, citing Ferpa, has strenuously refused to disclose who received the scholarships, even though colleges—including Central Arkansas—regularly disclose other scholarship winners when they think the awards reflect glory on the institutions…

The fault in Ferpa begins with a poorly worded statute. The law begs to be misapplied by defining educational records as those that "contain information directly related to a student." And the statute carries a knee-buckling potential penalty: the loss of all federal education support. With the lopsided incentive system—reveal too much and your institution risks the financial death penalty; reveal too little and you might get a court order directing you to disclose—colleges almost invariably err on the side of secrecy.

Instructively, the courts have been almost unanimously unsympathetic to the Education Department's expansionist view of Ferpa…