Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

FERPA is a Federal law that provides the following rights to adult students or to the parents of students under the age of 18:

(1) The right to inspect and review the information that the university is keeping on the student;

(2) The right to seek amendment to those records and in certain cases append a statement to the record;

(3) The right to consent to disclosure of his/her records; and

(4) The right to file a complaint with the FERPA Office in Washington

(Excerpted from “FERPA:  Protect Our Students, Protect Ourselves”, University of Maryland, http://ferpa.sis.usmd.edu/ferpaweb/)

An accurate interpretation of FERPA hinges on the definition of a “student educational record.”   FERPA defines a student educational record as:

(1) Directly related to a student; and

(2) Maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution.

(FERPA 34 C.F.R. Part 99, Subpart A-General, Sec. 99.3, What definitions apply to these regulations?, http://www.lrp.com/ed/freelib/free_regs/c34_99_3.htm)

Under this loose definition, a student’s emails, data files, programs, and network account information may be interpreted as student educational records.  However, this matter is not very clear.  Both FERPA’s definition of student educational records as well as FERPA’s provisions as to what constitutes a violation of protecting the privacy of these records is neither clear nor well defined.  We recommend that Stanford officials establish a formal interpretation of FERPA, educate students, faculty, staff and system administrators about it, and put it into practice in a timely fashion.