Students are taking advantage of the ability to look into their admissions files—both at Duke and across the country.
After The New York Times reported on a successful attempt by students at Stanford University to obtain admissions records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in January, the Duke Office of the University Registrar has received more than 50 requests to review admissions files. Some peer institutions have also seen an increase in records requests, with Stanford seeing more than 2,500 requests in a little more than two months. In response to this increase, Stanford has begun destroying the records of students who have not filed requests.
At Duke, the registrar's office is taking steps to process requests in the order they are received, though University Registrar Bruce Cunningham noted that FERPA allows 45 days to fill each one.
“This is a very busy time for both the Office of Admissions and for our office, so these requests are creating a demand on resources at a time when it is difficult to dedicate those resources to this,” Cunningham wrote in an email Wednesday.
When students wish to review their files, they send their requests to the registrar's office, at which point Cunningham requests access to them from the admissions office. He noted that the admissions office has been handing over records “pretty quickly.”
Although the registrar’s office has so far only allowed students to review their records in person, Cunningham noted that the office has not decided whether it will give copies of records to alumni or students who are not currently on campus. FERPA states that the University must give students copies of records or make “other arrangements” if “a failure to do so would effectively prevent the student from obtaining access to the records.”
“We’re currently exploring how we will handle requests for students who are away from campus,” he wrote. “We have not yet decided how these will be handled.”
Cunningham expressed concern about the resources his office and the admissions office have had to dedicate to responding to FERPA requests. Each record must be reviewed individually and material from recommendations letters must be removed before the record is released to students, creating a lot of extra work at a busy time of the academic year.
“Our major concern is the amount of staff time it is taking to process these requests and pull together the records. Unfortunately, for both offices this involves utilizing staff time that could be devoted to other tasks,” he wrote. “FERPA grants this right of review to students, though, so it’s important that we make these records available to students who request them.”
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag expressed similar concerns. He noted that the admissions office has had to balance the need to respond to requests with work on the upcoming release of decisions for regular decision applicants.
“We understand the interest some students have in seeing their records, and we are committed to fulfilling those requests. There is work involved in fulfilling these requests, since we need to handle each request individually,” he wrote in an email Wednesday. “This is unfortunately occurring at the busiest time of the year for us as we prepare to provide decisions to over 28,000 regular decision applicants.”
For Stanford officials, this time-consuming process had been even more cumbersome because 400 of the roughly 2,800 requests came from alumni, said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice president for university communications. There are currently about 16,000 students at Stanford.
“Since the major influx of requests, we have returned to our previous practice of not retaining admissions officer notes.” Lapin wrote in an email Monday. “Historically, Stanford did not keep them. But when we transitioned to digital admissions, the notes were part of the digital files. We will no longer retain them, as they are not of use to the university and there is no requirement to keep them.”
The admissions offices at Yale University’s Law School and undergraduate college have also adopted a policy of deleting records, according to a March article by the Yale Daily News. FERPA does not require educational institutions to maintain records unless they have been requested.
When asked if Duke would delete admissions files, the registrar’s office deferred comment to the undergraduate admissions office. The undergraduate admissions office deferred comment on whether it would delete records until after undergraduate admissions decisions are released due to the high current workload.
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