Student profiles are sold to colleges, summer camps, test-prep firms and other companies. For sale: Student 'hopes and dreams'

This story is part of a new POLITICO series examining the unchecked expansion of private-sector data collection and the implications for consumer privacy.


Each year, more than 2 million middle school and high school students fill out comprehensive surveys for the National Research Center for College & University Admissions detailing their academic records, their athletic skills, their religious leanings, their aspirations.

In short, it’s “their hopes and dreams,” said Ryan Munce, the group’s vice president. He compiles profiles on each child.

Then he sells them.

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The recent flurry of interest in updating federal privacy law focuses on preventing children’s personal information from being sold without parental consent. Left unnoticed: The huge and lucrative market of peddling profiles with student consent — even when that consent may not be entirely informed.

Munce sells student profiles to colleges, summer camps, test-prep firms and other companies eager to promote education-related products and services to students. The revenue supports a staff of 83 at the NRCCUA. But Munce said it also helps students. The in-depth surveys “allow us to be the smartest guidance counselor in the world,” connecting participating teens to colleges and camps interested in kids just like them, Munce said.

He’s even planning to expand into offering free career interest surveys to every high-school freshman in the country, though he says he has no plans to sell that data.

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The NRCCUA surveys are typically distributed to teens in school: Each year, 55,000 teachers participate, Munce said.

Many kids also put their personal profiles on the market — whether they realize it or not — when they take college entrance exams.

Students taking the SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement exams and other standardized tests are asked to check off a box if they want to receive information from colleges or scholarship organizations.

Depending on the exam, at least 65 percent — and as many as 85 percent — of test takers check that box, according to the College Board and ACT.

That consent allows the College Board and ACT, both nonprofits, to market students’ personal profiles for 37 cents apiece.

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Those profiles can include information about the students’ grades and academic coursework — and also religion, ethnicity, citizenship status and expected need for financial aid in college. The ACT also lets customers filter student profiles by family income, parents’ education levels and student disabilities.

Because the profile data does not come from students’ official school records, but gleaned from their answers to survey questions attached to the exam, no parental consent is needed. Federal privacy law only requires parental consent for the release of school records or the collection of data from children under 13.

ACT spokesman Ed Colby wouldn’t give exact figures but said the sale of student profiles accounted for less than 5 percent of ACT’s total revenue, which topped $300 million in the fiscal year ending mid-2012. The College Board, which took in nearly $760 million that year, would not disclose revenue from its Student Search Service.

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Both organizations were sued last fall by an Illinois woman who said she was upset to learn that her personal information was sold for profit. It turned out she had never even taken a College Board exam and the case was dropped earlier this year. But the College Board did recently update its privacy policy, after Vice President John McGrath told POLITICO it might not have been clear to students exactly how much information is shared with third parties.

Both the ACT and SAT sell the personal information only to accredited postsecondary institutions, which can include for-profit colleges, nonprofit scholarship organizations and select educational programs.

Other brokers, however, peddle student data more widely.

The Educational Research Center of America, for instance, distributes its lengthy surveys in schools, requesting that teachers hand them out to “ALL of your students in ALL of your classes, grades 8 and above.”

The surveys range far beyond students’ grades and college aspirations. Eighth-graders are asked if anyone in their household owns a PlayStation, an iPhone, a Wii or a BlackBerry. They’re asked how many computers are in their house.

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ERCA, which did not return calls or emails seeking comment, sells the data to colleges, universities and businesses that seek to market products to students.

It also shares students’ personal information with ASLmarketing, a commercial data broker. ASL in turn sells the profiles to companies marketing credit cards, fast food, electronics, clothing, travel and more. The broker boasts that it has records on 4.3 million high school students — nearly all of them, according to its website, sure to be “in a buying frenzy.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied that the NRCCUA planned to sell information from new career assessment surveys as part of its student profiles.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Adam Sneed @ 05/15/2014 03:45 PM CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied that the NRCCUA planned to sell information from new career assessment surveys as part of its student profiles.