College students’ private information shared with third parties for political research in an exclusive revelation.

There are no parent-teacher conferences in college.

If a parent wants to know their student’s grades, the status of their student’s meal plan, or if they have dropped out of school without telling anyone, the school needs signed permission from the student and a personal identification number from the parent. Without that, because of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the school can tell parents next to nothing.

Without explicit student permission, this strict privacy policy prevents parents from knowing what classes a student is taking, even if parents are footing the bill.

Yet many colleges are freely handing over troves of FERPA-protected information to be analyzed for political research in exchange for a short report measuring the success of campus voter registration activities.

The report, released in federal election years, is called the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) and it is a project of Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) in Medford, Massachusetts.

Privacy Protections

According to FERPA, there are only three conditions under which a college or university can share personally identifiable information from an education record of a student without the student’s consent.

Disclosures are allowed if the information is being given to organizations conducting studies for, or on behalf of, educational agencies or institutions to:

• Develop, validate, or administer predictive tests.
• Administer student aid programs.
• Improve instruction.

Nancy Thomas, IDHE director at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, told The Epoch Times via email that NSLVE falls within the “studies exception” to FERPA.

“Its purpose is to improve student learning,” Ms. Thomas said. “If you review our website, you will see dozens of documents about educating for democracy year-round, not just during an election season, and using elections as that ‘teachable moment’ for students as responsible citizens in a democracy. We do other research on learning conditions for civic learning. We help campuses understand and use their NSLVE reports, but we always stress the educational value of this information.”

A newly released report by Verity Vote says the study has a political purpose.

Verity Vote is a group of citizen volunteers with professional data research and investigation backgrounds who started reviewing elections and election procedures throughout the country in 2020.

“Within the last decade, the youth vote has emerged as a significant determinant in elections,” the Verity Vote report says.

“Youth turnout has been increasing and their support for Democrats is also growing. In 2022, youth vote gave a +28 percent margin to Democrats. There are many factors that contribute to the disparity, but records show that Democrats could be gaining a systemic advantage through access to the best student data that money can’t buy.”

Personal Data on the Move

The most desirable of unregistered voters, young people, are largely absent from commercial data files, the Verity Vote report says.

Young people are hard to find. They tend to be more transient, and many have no credit history and no utilities in their name, which are two primary sources of commercial data. But lists of these potential but unregistered voters do exist.

In the school enrollment process, students disclose a lot of personal information to institutions, be it a community college, trade school, or larger college or university.

Here is how student data moves.

Institutions share student information with the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization that provides transcripts and financial aid services. Ninety-seven percent of post-secondary schools and over 70 percent of high schools in the United States share data with the Clearinghouse.

What’s unexpected for most students is the NSLVE asking institutions across the nation to sign an authorization form (pdf) instructing the Clearinghouse to use the institutions’ collection of FERPA-protected student enrollment data for participation in the survey.

In total, 1,254 institutions have signed the NSLVE authorization. Tufts has an online database where users can search for participating campuses.

Revealing Potential Voters

The current authorization form for schools has been extended to 10 years, meaning a 2023 authorization will last until 2033.

The authorization form informs institutions that IDHE has a contract with a “third-party vendor” that collects public voter registration and voting records nationally. The third party vendor collects data such as whether an individual registered to vote, whether they voted, their voting method, and where they voted.

The third-party vendor providing the voter registrat