Privacy, Ethics, and Institutional Research

There is an evergreen conflict between data collection, analysis, and use and privacy. The contours of the conflict change as technologies develop and as our understanding of the meaning and value of information and privacy evolve. Much of the social concern about data analytics focuses on law enforcement and security (for example, the NSA bulk metadata collection program, watch lists, and risk analysis algorithms) and on large internet and social media corporations (Facebook, Google, Amazon, among others). Higher education analytics and institutional research pales in comparison to the scope of social media, and higher education institutions wield little power over individuals compared to the NSA or the FBI. Nonetheless, institutional research affects people’s privacy, and much of the information collected by higher education institutions is highly sensitive. The importance of education privacy (by which I mean privacy regarding information about persons’ educational records, information about persons’ interactions with educational institutions, and information collected or accessed by educational institutions) is reflected both in federal law (FERPA) and in professional codes of ethics, among them the AIR Statement of Ethical Principles (2019) (“AIR Statement” or “Statement”).