Is Big Brother Watching Our Campuses?

Colleges are analyzing all kinds of student data to figure out who needs extra support and when advisers and faculty should intervene. But as technology advances, and students' offline and online lives become more intertwined, data analytics -- particularly, predictive analytics -- may raise more ethical questions. Data analysis is legal and performed with students' interests in mind. But it still raises privacy and ethics concerns, say Joel Reidenberg, founding academic director of the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University.

Even when colleges are collecting aggregate data and scrubbing it of personally identifiable information, if they use it to guide individuals, that's surveillance, he says. Universities should be able to navigate privacy and ethical issues: They are, after all, packed with people who conduct research and ponder big questions for a living. With well-trained advisers and well-designed tools, predictive analytics needn't pigeon-hole students into one major over another. At the heart of the debate over predictive technology are two competing visions for a college education. Should college be a period when students can find their passion, make mistakes and learn from them? Or does that approach doom some students -- particularly, underrepresented students -- to failure?