StudentPrivacy.college
The Privacy Ledger - protect and govern student data

Protect and govern student data

The Privacy Ledger is an independent guide to student privacy in higher education: educational records, consent, disclosures, EdTech, AI, vendors, security and data compliance. It follows one backbone through every guide: student, data and record, collection, use, consent or exception, disclosure, vendor and system, security and control, student right, breach and incident, institution obligation.

Start with what student privacy means, or open a ledger below. Every guide opens with a privacy check: the record, the data, the safeguard, and the first check to make. US law is primary here, FERPA, PPRA and COPPA where they intersect with college EdTech, and other jurisdictions are labelled separately and never blended. No guide decides a question for a specific student or institution; for a specific record, contact the institution's privacy officer.

A quiet campus records office: a closed file cabinet, a laptop showing a student portal login screen without legible text, and a notebook
The ledger, kept closed: a record, its holder, and its rules.

Walk the ledgers

Ledger 01 Student privacy foundations What student privacy means in higher education: the student, the record, the use, and the obligation that follows the data. 18 guides Ledger 02 FERPA in full The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as it works for colleges: what it protects, who it binds, and where its exceptions run out. 22 guides Ledger 03 Education records and directory information What counts as an education record, what directory information is, and how the line between them is drawn and published. 16 guides Ledger 04 Consent and disclosure exceptions When consent is required, when an exception permits disclosure, and how to tell a lawful exception from a convenient one. 20 guides Ledger 05 PPRA, surveys and marketing The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment where it touches colleges: surveys, sensitive questions, and marketing uses of student information. 11 guides Ledger 06 COPPA and younger students in EdTech Where the childrens privacy rule intersects with college EdTech: younger users, mixed audiences, and verifiable parental consent. 14 guides Ledger 07 Vendors and contracts The vendor chain: what a vendor collects, what the contract must forbid, and how an institution keeps control of student data it does not hold. 21 guides Ledger 08 Cloud systems and student portals Where student data lives now: cloud platforms, portals, single sign-on, and the controls that travel with the record. 17 guides Ledger 09 LMS platforms and learning data Learning management systems as record systems: clicks, submissions, grades, analytics, and the line between teaching and tracking. 15 guides Ledger 10 AI tools and student privacy Generative AI, proctoring, tutoring and advising tools: what they collect, what they learn from, and what an institution must settle before adoption. 19 guides Ledger 11 Biometrics and surveillance on campus Faces, fingerprints, cameras and location: the highest-sensitivity data on campus, and the governance it requires before any deployment. 13 guides Ledger 12 Student rights: access and correction The rights students hold over their own records: inspection, explanation, amendment requests, and what happens when a request is refused. 16 guides Ledger 13 Data retention and minimisation Keeping only what is needed, for only as long as it is needed: schedules, deletion, archives, and the records that must survive. 12 guides Ledger 14 Security controls for student data The controls that make a privacy promise real: access, authentication, encryption, logging, and the people who hold the keys. 18 guides Ledger 15 Breaches and incident response When student data is exposed: how to tell a breach from an incident, who is told, in what order, and what the record must show afterwards. 15 guides Ledger 16 Institutional privacy governance Who decides at an institution: the privacy officer, the committee, the policy, and the training that turns policy into habit. 20 guides Ledger 17 State student privacy laws Beyond federal law: state student privacy statutes, how they stack on FERPA, and why the strictest applicable rule usually governs. 14 guides Ledger 18 Research data and secondary use Records reused for research: consent, de-identification, review boards, and the uses a student never agreed to. 11 guides Ledger 19 Accessibility, equity and student privacy Privacy is not neutral: accessibility tools, disability records, and the students most exposed when data practices go wrong. 10 guides Ledger 20 Audits, documentation and readiness Proving the practice: inventories, assessments, audit trails, and the file an institution can show a regulator, a student, or itself. 17 guides
View all 319 guides

How this desk works

A campus privacy officer reviewing a printed data inventory at a desk, with a closed laptop beside it

Three rules. First, no invented figures and no compliance promises: this site publishes no case study of its own and never says a particular disclosure, vendor or system complies, because a guide cannot inspect a record it has never seen. Where a figure appears, it comes from an official source, is attributed, and carries the date it was checked; worked examples use round numbers and are labelled illustrations. Second, the record comes before the rule: identify the student, the data, and the holder before asking which law or exception applies, because the same disclosure changes character with the record it touches. Third, corrections are published, not buried: the corrections page records what changed and why.

This site does not recommend a vendor, product or system, does not run a directory, and does not generate leads. It explains the system so a reader can judge an institution's practice well, and routes questions about a specific record to the institution's privacy officer and to official US Department of Education guidance.

How the ledger is kept

The backbone runs in order, and the ledgers follow it: a student generates a record, an institution collects it for a stated purpose, use is limited to that purpose or to a lawful exception, disclosure is logged or justified, a vendor holds it only under contract, security controls guard it, the student can inspect and challenge it, a breach is handled and recorded, and the institution can show the whole chain.