Jarrod Gutman | Hands off that transcript, Mrs. Spellings

The Department of Education, in its admirable genius, presided over a generation of high-school graduates who can't locate Iraq on a map. Now, it wants to monitor your academic progress.

The architect of the plan is Bush crony and anti-gay neocon Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who co-authored the No Child Left Behind Act. This act has been a bureaucratic nightmare for primary and secondary educators, and has seen limited success.

Last month, Spellings highlighted the recommendations of her Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Citing the need for a "robust culture of accountability and transparency," Spellings would like to see Congress pass legislation creating a federal database to track college students' academic progress. If it weren't so frightening, it would be laughable to hear such words coming from the most unaccountable and closed administration since Nixon.

Spellings did not offer specifics on what she wants the government to collect, but the database would likely include items like race, gender and financial status.

Collecting data on individual students would, according to the commission, improve existing aggregated data collection methods, since these methods miss the more than 50 percent of students who attend multiple institutions to complete their baccalaureate work.

Spellings has handily tried to frame the database debate around improving the overall quality of, and access to, higher education, particularly for minority and low-income students. But we should be highly skeptical when this government pretends to care about the welfare of disadvantaged classes. The only things the Cheney administration wants out of poor, black and Hispanic students are obedient workers and dead soldiers. In fact, Spellings rebuked the commission's recommendation to push for increased funding for federal, Pell grants, which serve the most needy students.

The real point, that the government needs individual student data to tell potential "consumers" whether colleges are providing access to quality education, is a false dilemma. Even if one accepts that higher education is in crisis, Spellings has yet to show (and cannot show) how collecting individual student data would resolve the problem.

"If you want to change the demographics of college, you have to change what goes on in high schools," said Robert Zemsky, chairman of Penn's Learning Alliance for Higher Education and a commission member. Zemsky would prefer the secretary focus on reforming the irrational and confusing financial-aid process. He did endorse the commission's report, but did so "without enthusiasm."

Spellings says she simply wants to extend to higher education the outcome-based principles of the NLCB Act. But we should not forget that, buried in the text of that act, are provisions making it easier for military recruiters to access underage students.

It is also suspect that out of the 19 commission members, five were corporate executives. Although Zemsky denied the existence of a corporate agenda guiding the commission, such companies would have a natural interest in the database, as they could mine it for potential employees or be awarded the contract to manage it.

"It's the solution that's the problem," Zemsky said. "How do you track [student information] without creating a database that can be used nefariously?" Zemsky admitted to being "struck" by e-mails he received as commissioner from people voicing privacy concerns. "There are ways technically of doing this so that you have no trouble with the privacy," he said.

But despite claims that the data would be encrypted, the government would likely allow individual identities to be disclosed when it would serve its needs. The recently disclosed Project Strike Back - in which the FBI secretly mined student financial aid information collected by the Education Department - is a chilling example of how the government disregards students' expectations of privacy.

Faced with widespread public criticisms of the database, Spellings herself has admitted she would have a tough time convincing private colleges, which are generally less reliant on federal funding than their public counterparts, to comply. Also, in March, the House expressly prohibited the creation of such a database. And because of concerns raised by both the far left and far right, Zemsky said, the creation of a full-scale federal database is unlikely to pass the Senate.

"I'm not sure the federal government could force anything," said Zemsky. "If higher education's going to change, then it's because higher education recognizes change is important."

Revising early admission policies, as several schools have recently decided to do, is one way colleges can attempt to improve accessibility without government intervention and intrusion into students' privacy.

Jarrod Gutman is a research coordinator in the School of Medicine from Philadelphia, Pa., and a College of General Studies graduate student. His e-mail address is gutman@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Fifth Column appears on Fridays.

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