Okay, class, all together now, “I’m about to get my loans forgiven.” Amidst all the chaos shaking our federal government, one ongoing drama should have the attention of everyone with student loans: Elon Musk may have committed a serious FERPA violation when he was allowed access to the Department of Education’s data, also known as your data.
Mrs. Laverne Mickens (@scholarshipcollegemama) went viral after announcing that she would file a complaint about a FERPA violation. (As of Feb. 12, more than 111,000 people have shared her video.)
What is FERPA? The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act became law in November 1974 to protect the privacy of personally identifiable information in a student’s education record, usually limited to education activity. It has two purposes: (1) to grant parents (and students 18 or older) access to information in the student’s education record and (2) to protect that information from disclosure to third parties without parental consent.
Mickens isn’t the only one concerned about Musk and his team’s unfettered access to the Department of Education as part of their flamethrower approach to cost-cutting. The department denies sharing sensitive data without authorization.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that students or their parents cannot sue an educational institution for damages if the school improperly discloses the student’s protected information. So, it seems unlikely that a complaint against the DoE will result in student loan forgiveness.
However, the outrage from people like Mickens and the students at UC Berkeley led the Department of Education to temporarily block Musk and his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency team.
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