Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (“FERPA”), as amended, prohibits the University from having a pattern or practice of disclosing education records without a student’s consent. As such, each campus of the University of Illinois has established policies, guidelines and procedures to ensure the confidentiality of student education records, to educate students about their right to inspect and review their education records, to clarify the circumstances under which educational records may be released to third parties, and to provide appropriate procedures to be followed by students for the correction of inaccurate or misleading data within their educational records.

 

Each campus’ policy can be found at the following links:
Urbana-Champaign: http://admin.illinois.edu/policy/code/article3
Chicago: http://www.uic.edu/depts/oar/campus_policies/records_policy.html
Springfield: http://www.uis.edu/registration/records/studentrecordpolicy.html

Both the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 and each campus policy provide a student with the following rights:

  • The Right to inspect and review all records that are directly related to the student and are maintained by the University of Illinois
  • The Right to seek amendment of records that the student believes to be inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise in violation of the student’s privacy rights
  • The Right to consent to disclosure of personally identifiable information contained in the student’s educational records: Except as otherwise provided by FERPA, disclosure of personally identifiable student information must be accompanied by the written consent of the student. The University may release Directory Information, as specifically defined by each campus policy, without the student’s consent unless the student has taken the steps necessary to opt-out of the release of that information. In addition, prior student consent is not required where the disclosure is made pursuant to one of at least 17 separate exceptions to the consent rule. Check your campus’ policy for further explanation.
  • The Right to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education concerning alleged failures by the University to comply with the requirements of FERPA

Those complaints can be directed to:

The Family Policy Compliance Office
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202-4605