As universities move away from the Social Security number to identify students, how will those new student ID numbers be handled? For example, can they be publicly posted instead of the student’s name? Is that an invasion of privacy?

This was just one of the issues discussed at the recent Educause annual policy conference. Focus of the discussion was the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed changes to regulations governing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.

Until now, the rules haven’t specified whether students’ Social Security numbers, and the proprietary ID numbers many colleges now assign to students, fall into the “directory information” category, items that normally aren’t considered harmful or an invasion of privacy. The proposed changes would ban the use of both numbers from that designation, but as this article points out, that could result in unintended effects.

Read more here.