There is little chance that results from assessment tests, counselor or teacher comments or other private student information will be merged with college records any time soon at SF State.
That's because the technological ability of colleges and universities to link up with high schools and combine data is many years away, said Thomas Brown, director of admissions and records at SF State.
By this December, however, Brown hopes to start "sending and receiving SPEEDE transcripts" between SF State and the College of San Mateo and City College of San Francisco. SPEEDE stands for Standardization of Post-secondary and Electronic Data Exchange.
Sometime in 1996, SF State plans to be one of the first schools to go online with SPEEDE, he said. The student data will flow through the Internet, making access easy and cheap for the university.
The amount of information that must be standardized among colleges and universities is "mind boggling," he said. Matching classes between institutions will be one of the biggest problems. Even so, it doesn't compare to the headaches involved with matching college and high school records. "There's so much data collected in high school that we don't care about," he said. Computers will have to be programmed to delete that information. More importantly, he said, high schools aren't ready to go online.
Brown reiterated SF State's commitment to protecting student privacy. Any teacher, administrator or staff person who accesses student records is liable to keep that information confidential. He pointed out that students can request to have their private information withheld from directory information by filling out a form with Admissions and Records. Currently, 345 students have made that request, he said.
SF State is required to provide statistical information to the U.S. Department of Education or to authorized department surveys, he said. The data doesn't include personal information, but does include student identification numbers, which are often social security numbers.
There are some exceptions to sharing private student information. If a student applies for financial aid, the federal government, banks and other lending institutions will receive student addresses and phone numbers as well as academic records.
Also, law enforcement agencies can subpoena student records, Brown said. He said he would give out some student information without a subpoena if there was a "true emergency."