Data as tool, tool as bludgeon

by Cliopatria

I'm not a Chronicle of Higher Education subscriber, so I missed this when it broke last week. The federal government wants to track college students by social security number so that individual progress can be more closely monitored and studied even through transfers, dropouts, etc. There are many times when I've thought"we should have the information to answer that question" or"wouldn't it be interesting if we kept track of that".... then I remember just how badly most administrators and bureaucrats use information and I get worried again. Make no mistake: this is information which will be used to cut down student populations (cross-checks against prison records?), to cut funding for student programs (particularly for those who violate the normative four years to degree), to redistribute funds to schools"performing better" (by meaningless statistical measures, leading to further grade inflation and administrative interference in teaching and pressure for research"productivity"), and, though the article doesn't mention it, could be really useful for Selective Service tracking. Alarmist? Well, I'm alarmed; why shouldn't you be?

Update: Mr. Morgan, in comments, refers to federal funding as the"thin wedge" that allows the government to insist on accountability, as well as access. At least one federal court disagrees: Colleges can bar military recruiters in protest against military anti-gay policy. Obviously the government isn't done appealing this case, and the issues aren't quite the same. But Free Speech, upon which that case hinges, also would (probably) form the foundation of challenges to Federal curricular interference.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Oscar Chamberlain - 12/3/2004

I've always been uncomfortable with the attempts to ban military recruitment (or recruitment by the CIA, or other government entities).

I grant that an argument can be made that universities can deny facilities to organizations that discriminate. In fact that is a far more defensible position than the banning of CIA recruiters because of what a democratically elected government ordered the CIA to do.

However, at another level, the bans on military and CIA recruiters have always struck me as an attempt to inhibit freedom of association with some of the largest and most important institutions within our society. That concerns me.

On a more practical level, I would prefer to see greater interaction between the military and campuses. I don't think the military's presence is necessarily a source of contamination. In fact a stronger presence on campuses might do the rest of us some good. {Did I hear someone talking about diversity lately?)

Conversely, we might do them some long-term good by association with us. Maybe they would become a bit more diverse.

Jonathan Dresner - 12/1/2004

No, but the step after data collection is data use....

Richard Henry Morgan - 12/1/2004

I think I pretty much restricted my remarks to the feds asserting a right to accountability, rather than access. In any case, the recent federal court decision addresses the question of access, on the basis of a right to freedom of association -- the school couln't be forced to associate with JAG recruiters. I doubt that applies as a precedent to the question of supplying data to the government.

Jonathan Dresner - 11/30/2004

You found it before I came back to read comments. It came up a few months back, as well, regarding the DHS's request for census data regarding certain MidEast and Near East resident aliens and descended citizens, and the Census Bureau issued one of their "we didn't do anything technically wrong but we're sorry anyway" dances again. Nobody at DHS has yet adequately explained what the data was for or why they did a special request for data that is actually available (assuming that's what they really asked for and got) via publicly accessible census websites.

And they wonder why we're nervous?

I agree that funding is often that thin wedge, and once the funding has gone on for a while and you're dependent on it, it's more like a sledgehammer than a scalpel... or withdrawal from a drug, or something.

Richard Henry Morgan - 11/30/2004

I found some info on the question of the Census and Japanese-Americans (I'm not all that impressed by the bald assertionthat no laws were broken -- if so, why the apology?):

http://www.asianweek.com/2003_03_30/news_censusapology.html

The legal case concerning the Census was Morales, et al v. Daley. A temporary injunction was granted to plaintiffs, and summary judgment to the respondent (William Daley, the Secretary of Commerce). The decision was based, essentially, on statutory language saying that individual information would not be shared by the Census bureau. Imagine that. You have nothing to fear because the statutes (currently) don't allow the Census Bureau to share their data in a manner that allows for individual matching with returns. Unbelievable.

Julie A Hofmann - 11/30/2004

You know, I'm all for accountability, but this truly offends me. I got a lot of grant money (Fed and CA) as an undergrad, and wouldn't have minded letting them know how it all turned out. But I look at what many students have now in terms of financial aid, and it turns my stomach. While the Feds are clamoring for 'accountability' and 5 year degrees, they are cutting funding (student and institutional) and asking states to pick up more of the tab (not happening). The result is that many students have to work far more hours than was the norm when I was in school (and I worked 30 hours a week till my senior year).

I do admit that many of my students seem to have greater material needs than my peers and I did (many have car payents, for example, and Starbucks didn't exist), but they also seem to have to deal with many more outside expectations.

Richard Henry Morgan - 11/30/2004

I too was aghast. But this sort of thing seems to follow as night follows day, when the federal government starts handing out the cash, they want to know what happens with it. And of course data is not destroyed. Even though federal law explicitly prohibited the feds from compiling a fed data base from firearm purchase clearances, under Reno that's precisely what they did with it.

When I worked for the Census Bureau, I had the unhappy task of tracking down recalcitrant citizens. One had stone-walled me for days, promising a completed census form. Finally he lied to me, saying he had left it out for me, and I hadn't returned when I said I would to pick it up -- I had. Finally he just admitted that he wasn't going to fill out the form beyond the listing of the number of inhabitants of his building. He had a photocopy of an article concerning a court ruling from another federal district court, saying that anything beyond simple enumeration could not be compelled. Certainly an interesting argument, and one with which I have a certain sympathy. Within the article was the assertion that the federal government had used Census data to track down Japanese-Americans during WWII -- even though the data had been collected under a promise of confidentiality. As something of an expert in that area, can you tell me if that is true?