FERPA

1 Introduction
2 Annual Notice to Students
3 Legitimate Educational Interest
4 Data Requests
5 Application Notice - student employment
6 Not for Release
7 FERPA Training
8 Questions
9 Resources

Introduction

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law designed to

Protect the privacy of education records,
Establish the rights of students to inspect and review their education records, and
Provide guidelines for the correction of inaccurate or misleading data within education records.

The essence of FERPA:

College students must be permitted to inspect and review their own education records.
School officials may not disclose personally identifiable information about students nor permit inspection of their records without written permissions unless such action is covered by certain exceptions permitted by FERPA.

UC and UCSB policy guiding principles:

When law and policy are silent on student records, use and access are to be guided by two principles:

Privacy of an individual is of great weight, and
The information in a student’s files should be disclosed to the student on request within a reasonable timeframe.

All campus and University officials are required to comply with FERPA, UC, and UCSB policy regarding student education records. A "campus official" or "University official" is any individual designated by the University of California to perform an assigned function on behalf of the University.

Annual Notice to Students

https://registrar.sa.ucsb.edu/Student-Records/student-records-privacy/information-for-students/annual-notice-to-students

Legitimate Educational Interest

Confidential information may be released within the university, such as to a faculty or staff member acting in the student’s educational interests and the information is needed in the course of performing advisory, instructional, supervisory, or administrative duties for the university. The Registrar is authorized to determine when information may be released to serve the best educational interests of a student.
Reasonable physical, technological or administrative methods must be used to ensure that campus or University officials obtain access to only those student records in which they have legitimate educational interests.
Any disclosure of personally identifiable information which is permitted as part of “legitimate educational interest” must meet the following re-disclosure requirements:
- The information may not be further disclosed without written consent of the student. Any consent form obtained from the student must be maintained in the student's file.
- You may use the information only for the express purposes for which the disclosure was made:
  - The information or record is relevant and necessary to the accomplishment of some task or determination; and
  - The task or determination is an employment responsibility for you.

Data Requests

As a campus or University official, staff and faculty have been granted access to student information systems based on their legitimate educational need-to-know.
For ad-hoc reports or additional data not accessible via the student information system, submit a request to REGgia@sa.ucsb.edu.

Application Notice - student employment

For some student employment positions at UCSB, the hiring department may access and verify information from a student-applicant's educational record, if required for that specified position (example: teaching assistant, tutor).

For positions where your department will be accessing and/or verifying information from the student-applicant's UCSB educational record as part of the hiring process, please add the following text to the job application:

"By submitting an application for employment for this position, the applicant authorizes the hiring agency to access their academic record for the purpose of confirming enrollment status and related eligibility for student employment."

FERPA requires that student-applicants must be notified that their UCSB educational record will be accessed for this purpose. Adding this statement to the application fulfills this requirement.

Not for Release

Under FERPA, any student may, at any time, refuse to let UCSB designate any or all types of information about them as directory information.

Students who wish to officially restrict the release of any or all directory information, must file the “Request to Restrict / Release Student Data” form with the Office of the Registrar.

Requested data will be kept confidential until the student notifies UCSB to discontinue the restriction by filing a new “Request to Restrict / Release Student Data” form with the Office of the Registrar.

If a student has filed a request with the Office of the Registrar to restrict disclosure of their directory information, staff and faculty will be alerted of the student's status in BLUE.
PLEASE NOTE that if "Name" is listed as a restricted data element, UCSB must respond to all inquiries by stating that "we have no information about this person." Do not use the word "student" in your response, as referring to them as such confirms their status as a student.

FERPA Training

All campus and University officials are required to complete the UCSB FERPA training, available in the UC Learning Center, before access to any student information will be granted. This includes all system access (eGrades, AAA, BLUE/STAR/SREG, and others). See also Requesting Access to Student Systems