About the Privacy Ledger
StudentPrivacy.college is an independent publication about one job: helping readers understand student privacy and data governance in higher education, from a first education record to a vendor contract, without confusing a general guide with a decision for a specific student or institution.
Most student privacy advice is published by people selling a system, a platform or a compliance service. Their guides are brochures with tips in them. This desk has nothing to sell. It reads the law, official guidance and institutional practice, and explains, ledger by ledger and stage by stage, what the evidence supports, what varies by jurisdiction, and what only the institution holding the record can decide.
What this site is
A higher-education student privacy and data-governance authority site. Its backbone is student, data and record, collection, use, consent or exception, disclosure, vendor and system, security and control, student right, breach and incident, institution obligation. Coverage includes FERPA, PPRA, COPPA where EdTech and younger users intersect, education records, directory information, consent, disclosure exceptions, vendors, cloud systems, student portals, LMS platforms, AI tools, biometrics, surveillance technologies, data retention, breaches, access and correction rights, and institutional privacy governance.
What we are not
We are not a college, a regulator, a law firm or a vendor, and nothing here is a recommendation of a firm, product or system. We do not generate leads and we do not run a directory. No guide makes a FERPA determination for a specific student or institution, promises a compliance outcome, or advises a specific student, family or institution on a specific record, disclosure or vendor arrangement. For a specific record, contact the institution's privacy officer.
The rule about numbers
Privacy content runs on borrowed figures: a breach count with no source, a fine with no date, a risk claim with no method. This site does not publish numbers it cannot stand behind. Figures quoted here come from primary law or official guidance, are attributed, and carry the date they were checked. Worked examples use round numbers and are labelled illustrations, never real cases.
How guides are made
Each guide is written against the sources listed at its foot, carries the date its evidence was last checked, and opens with a privacy check summarising the record, the data, the safeguard and the first check. If law or official guidance changes, the affected guides change and the corrections page records it.
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