In the name of making higher education more transparent, Congress is attempting to codify an unprecedented data-collection scheme. Instead of fixing our education system, it would be a disastrous, unnecessary breach of privacy.
In an age of Flock cameras, digital assistants, and artificial intelligence embedded into every device and every app, people increasingly feel like none of their data is private. The so-called College Transparency Act could make that a reality. The bill would enable the federal government to create a surveillance system that collects the personal information of every student enrolled in a college or other higher education institution without their consent or the ability to opt out. It is not about making colleges more transparent to consumers, but making every aspect of a student’s life transparent to colleges.
The CTA is not a new idea. The last time it bubbled up was in 2022, when its sponsors in the House attempted to attach it as the Levin Amendment to a bill related to China. Many House Republicans saw it for the data-overreach Trojan horse that it was and overwhelmingly defeated the amendment. Its resounding defeat led the Senate not to attempt to bring it up that year. But inexplicably, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee resurrected the bill last month, and it successfully passed with the support of every member on the committee save one: Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL).
Despite its goal of making colleges transparent, the database the CTA would create is entirely focused on the private information of postsecondary students. Not only are attendance status, attendance intensity, program of study, status as a distance student, credential-seeking status, race, gender, and economic status all included in the list of data to be collected, but also, vaguely, “other data elements that are necessary in accordance with clause.” Essentially, whatever the federal government decides it wants to collect and include in the database, it could.
What this bill would not require is information on universities that would actually be helpful to parents and students when deciding between colleges. Information such as the sorts of political biases that school administrators have. How are they ensuring that race does not play a factor in admissions criteria? What foreign nations are giving funds to the college,and on what are the colleges spending those monies? What research projects do schools prioritize? How do they ensure that free speech is protected on campus? This is information that would truly increase transparency. But instead, the database created by the CTA would prioritize data on how a student is living their life after graduation.
Supposedly, this is to help determine whether or not a school is successful. But what if a very successful college student chooses to get married and be a stay-at-home mother? If she is not earning the salary she should for the degree that she got, will that be a mark against her alma mater? What about those students who choose to go into lifelong ministry, missionary work, or nonprofit careers? This bill does not outline what makes a college successful. It just insists that the government collect the data, to be dealt with at a later date.
The bill would also allow for the information in the databases to be shared with other agencies. Every postsecondary student’s personal data could be matched to information held by the Social Security Administration, the IRS, the Pentagon, and the Census Bureau.
What about the threat of data leaks? The bill includes directives that this database have the latest cybersecurity features currently in place across the federal government. But databases are always ripe for abuse. Not only do they make people vulnerable to the abuses of government overreach and a mismanaged bureaucracy, but they can also be used by foreign adversaries. Earlier this year, an unknown threat actor hacked into an information-sharing database within the Department of Homeland Security. And that is merely the latest breach.
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The CTA would upend Congress’s long-standing prohibition against this exact kind of federal data collection. In 2008, lawmakers amended the Higher Education Act of 1965 to specifically prohibit “the development, implementation, or maintenance of a Federal database of personally identifiable information … that tracks individual students over time” who are attending institutions that are governed by the act. Despite claims that this database will not be out of step with what is already in place, the fact that the CTA would entirely repeal this protection established by Congress entirely rejects that argument.
People do need colleges to be more transparent in their operations, financial decisions, ideological biases, and educational priorities that will help prospective students make informed decisions that will impact their futures. But the CTA is not the answer.
Maggie McKneely is the director of government relations for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA