FERPA

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.

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

Questions

Contact the Office of the Registrar for consultation at any time:

Sara Cook

Associate Registrar for Academic and Student Services

805-893-8653 or sara.cook@sa.ucsb.edu

Resources

https://registrar.sa.ucsb.edu/faculty-staff/resources-for-faculty-staff/ferpa-for-faculty-staff

https://registrar.sa.ucsb.edu/Student-Records/student-records-privacy/ferpa-resources