Higher education policy disputes in Washington are generally about information. As a rule, the federal government doesn’t (and shouldn’t) regulate how universities conduct their academic affairs. So most new federal initiatives consist of lawmakers asking questions: How many of your students graduate? How much money do you spend? On what? And so on. For the D.C. higher-education lobby, the standard response to proposed new information reporting requirements is to (A) Loudly declare that they’re a bad idea, and then (B) Go back to the office and try to come up with a justification for (A).
Such justifications come in three flavors. First, that American colleges and universities operate under a sacred principal of autonomy that dates back to (and possibly precedes) the founding of the republic. This one hasn’t been working very well lately, mostly because it’s not true, but also because it begs the question of what, exactly, universities have to hide. The second argument is that new reporting requirements represent a terribly onerous administrative burden — because higher-education institutions are apparently the only organizations in all the world that have been unable to use information technology to realize vast increases in the efficiency of gathering, storing, and processing information. Third, colleges argue that sending more information to the feds would constitute a grave threat to student privacy, a kind of creeping Big Brotherism that must be opposed at all costs. This one has been gaining traction lately, particularly given the current administration’s attitudes towards civil liberties.
Then I pick up The New York Times and read that colleges are perfectly willing to disclose information about individual students to large private corporations, in exchange for money, so those corporations can sell students high-interest credit cards and give them a head start on pursuing the American dream of overconsumption and ruinous debt. Because while the U.S. Department of Education (a public agency accountable to elected officials which operates under strict federal privacy rules) can’t be trusted, Bank of America can. It all depends, as it usually does, on whose interests are being served.
