Why Should Feds Track College Students?

[Swamp Rat]

KATHERINE HALEY WILL
July 31 2006

Does the federal government need to know whether you aced Aristotelian ethics but had to repeat introductory biology? Does it need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home?

The Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education thinks so. In its first draft report, released in late June, the commission called for creation of a tracking system to collect sensitive information about our nation's college students. Its second draft, made public last week, softens the name of the plan, but the essence of the proposal remains unchanged.

Whether you call it a "national unit records database" (the first name) or a "consumer-friendly information database" (the second), it is in fact a mandatory federal registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers - every course, every step, every misstep. Once established, it could easily be linked to existing K-12 and workforce databases to create unprecedented cradle-to-grave tracking of American citizens. All under the watchful eye of the federal government.

The commission calls our nation's colleges and universities unaccountable, inefficient and inaccessible. In response it seeks to institute collection of personal information designed to quantify our students' performance in college and in the workforce.

(snip)

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-khwill0731.artjul31,0,984479.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped

[havocmom]

1. Information is power

The corporations wanna know who might know what. Makes it easier to exploit some and defend against others.

It is fascism.

[Swamp Rat]

4. Actions like this should be taken as a sign of things to come - eugenics.

From birth to death they want to control every human.

Yes, it is fascism.

[havocmom]

10. If you can be exploited, you will be.

If not, you will be removed from the machine. Only good cogs allowed.

You got it Swampy!

You and me, we be the wooden shoes ;)

[Swamp Rat]

14. Reading suggestion: "War Against the Weak" by Edwin Black

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

"How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."

--------------------------------

In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics."

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

[havocmom]

16. Great post, dear Swamp Rat

I have seen evidence of it all my life. And I am of Nordic root... but I am not blind.

[jwirr]

26. By the way, you said I should wake up - well I was one of the first

persons on this board to recommend this book long before the 2004 election.

[Swamp Rat]

27. That makes two of us.

:) Just makin' sure everyone's payin' attention. :hi:

[lostinacause]

35. Corporations don't need to do such things.

It takes very little time to get the relevant information about a person. Further, most of the larger businesses use self-selection methods to suit their interests. Things like multi-tiered pricing come to mind. Having such records does not really create any value for them.

[Crowdance]

2. "Skills Draft" will require such a database

The cheapest way to run a draft will be to induct the people already trained to have the skills they need, thereby avoiding training the unskilled. They did this with commercial airline pilots during Vietnam. When they ran low, they raided the pilots' lounges of the major airlines, leaving the airlines to train a new batch to keep commerce aloft. It was easy to find these guys because they were all licensed by a federal agency. Who needs an agency to keep track of students' and employees' training when technology can allow the machines to do it?

[kineneb]

28. good thing I studied music history

don't think they will have anything for me to do in their insane Wars Without End. But bad for engineering students, etc.

[jwirr]

3. If you are getting federal loans or grants they will want to make

sure that you are keeping your grades above C, the financial information is for determining the amount of loans or grants you get, etc. So some of this information is necessary. I went to college in the 70s and I had to answer many of these questions and I did not see it as fascism.

[Swamp Rat]

5. How do you feel about Karl Rove knowing your grades and sharing the info

will all possible employers. Maybe he will recommend you NEVER be allowed to have a job in the USA because he did not like those classes on feminism you attended.

"Fuck that jwirr and all those **** like her! She'll NEVER be allowed to work in the USA earning a salary above minimum wage. Women like her should be pregnant and in the kitchen! That'll teach her and her ilk!"

WAKE UP!!! :hangover:

[jwirr]

25. Those stats are already available to the government for any one

getting fed money to go to school and have been ever since these loans/grant programs started. No one is going to give money to a student without knowing some of this stuff. Try going to your local banker and borrowing money for a car without a background check.

As to employers - they ask for transcripts and have for as long as I can remember. It is about 60 years too late to stop the government from seeking to know where it's money is being used. As to how I feel - well no one asked me in 1972 when I started college. It was a choice of giving up those college loans/grants or comply with the requirements. I

As to rover - well I would much rather he not be in government at all - hopefully we can do something about that in a few months.

[Swamp Rat]

30. Well, I am not OK with any of this.

I know THEY have a lot of information on us already, but THEY want more and more and more...

I've never had a potential employer ask me for a school transcript. If I was applying for a teaching position and was asked to present one, I would provide copies of my diplomas and a list of relevant courses, but nothing more.

[JHB]

15. There are already mechanisms for that...

...which are adequate for that purpose, which this goes beyond.

For instance, if a school receives a student's loan or grant money, it might be required to send a notice to the lender/grantor if the student's grades drop to an unacceptable level, but that's mediated by the school. The lender/grantor isn't tracking the student's grades and activites directly.

The scariest part of the OP was the part about calling it a "user-friendly database". Used by WHO?

[Hissyspit]

34. You are living in a fantasy if you don't see the Orwellian intent in this.

This is above and beyond the information the government currently collects.

[CoffeeCat]

6. Wow. That's totally disturbing...

...College is a time for people to learn, experiment and engage in all kinds of expression and activity--to prepare them for life.

I would not want anyone seeing my college record. I went through a really difficult time in college. After moving away from an abusive home--I used the college environment to heal. I took classes here and there...worked some. Some semesters I was on the Dean's List; some my grades were horrendous. It was a long, hard slog.

If someone had access to my entire record---that would be such an invasion of my life and my privacy.

Looking at the basic information--does not fully explain what was going on. It's like they're attempting to track everyone like hunted dogs.

I wonder what they would use this information for?

They're probably trying to track involvement in subversive or progressive organizations and groups. We all know that colleges and universities are the cradles of revolutionary change in this country.

We're just about due for a revolution--and it looks like they're attempting to have a chilling effect on it at the college level.

Furthermore, we all know that blackmail is a common weapon for these neocon thugs. That's probably part of it too.

[Swamp Rat]

8. The neocons are attacking every institution in America.

Academia is one of our last sanctuaries for freedom of thought.

If they are not stopped, we will soon enter a new Dark Age.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

7. Dictators track everyone. n/t

[sweetheart]

9. a comprehensive slave database

Then any slave can be controlled like a rat in a maze, demographically lead by the carrots
of statistical likelihood and the rovian backroom telephone calls to stop people from working
who are not stupid or onboard with their stupid-programme.

[Swamp Rat]

12. This is the beginning of a new eugenics movement.

And we are Guinea Pigs.

[Extend a Hand]

11. creepy

I guess we'll have to look at international universities

[Swamp Rat]

13. I fear European countries will do this as well.

China already does this.

It seems unlikely at this time, but maybe South America or Africa will become sanctuaries for academic freedom?

[Extend a Hand]

17. I fear for my children

:scared: :scared: :cry: :cry:

[Hubert Flottz]

18. We need one of these things to turn on the politicians!

Let them piss in a cup and take a wage cut!

[Chiyo-chichi]

19. This is very disturbing.

And while it may be related to a skills draft and certainly is as facist as all of the other dozens of illegal programs this administration uses to monitor us, I can't help but think that it is all part of the broader conservative attack on higher education.

Here are two good reads:

"activist trustees... appointed by conservative governors to the boards of public universities. (They) believe that they must act aggressively to cure sclerotic, selfish American higher education."
Activist Trustees Wield Power Gone Awry

"Reminiscent of the McCarthy era, universities and colleges across the country, particularly the faculty who teach at them, are being attacked in the name of patriotism, homeland security, and the "war on terrorism."
Campus Insecurity: The Right's Attack on Faculty, Programs, and Departments at U.S. Universities

Even if I'm way off base, they have certainly created environments where the trustees aren't going to resist anything the govt. wants to impose on their universities. They may have also pre-emtively eradicated any possibility that college campuses will once again become integral parts of a broad-based peace movement. They can't have that if we're going to have endless war.

[Swamp Rat]

23. Great links

Thanks! :hi:

[Igel]

20. Here are links.

I skimmed the report, and my impression is the writer cited didn't. I didn't skim the earlier report, so she may have assumed earlier recommendations were carried over to the revised report (which is still a draft). I don't have time for anything else involving this today.

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports.html has a link to the report.

Direct link to the report:

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports/0714-draft.pdf

It calls for a user-friendly database with all kinds of stuff in it, most of which I think I'd rather like if I were a first-time student; but individual student records aren't among them. It does call for comprehensive curriculum and accreditation reform.

[Selatius]

21. The bankers want the gov't to keep track of students who take loans.

They want the government to protect their investments. I mean the loans, not the students.

[Swamp Rat]

22. Don't I know it!

:eyes:

[Swamp Rat]

24. kick n/t

[Hissyspit]

29. Colleges are a "liberal" bastion, so they are attacking them.

This is totalitarianism, plan and simple. Don't be fooled. They want control of everything, Congress, the Supreme Court, voting machines. colleges and universities...

Pure fascism.

An ugly, ugly time we are living in.

[Swamp Rat]

31. Everything we say and do will be held against us in the court of...

Big Brother Bushler

[BuyingThyme]

32. Remember when Pukes used to shit over the Census?

[Swamp Rat]

33. Hell, I know repukes who SWORE Clinton was going to spy on them,

take their guns, increase the size of the government, stifle freedom of speech, ad infinitum. And yes, I've heard CONSPIRACY THEORIES that the U.S. Census was going to be one of the mechanisms used to implement all of the above.