But It’s For Homeland Security. And the Children.

Gettysburg College President Katherine Haley Will doesn’t care for the Department of Education’s new spending program:

A proposal by the Education Department would force every college and university in America to report all their students’ Social Security numbers and other information about each individual — including credits earned, degree plan, race and ethnicity, and grants and loans received — to a national databank. The government will record every student, regardless of whether he or she receives federal aid, in the databank.

The government’s plan is to track students individually and in full detail as they complete their post-secondary education. The threat to our students’ privacy is of grave concern, and the government has not satisfactorily explained why it wants to collect individual information.

She’s rightly concerned about the privacy implications, but I’m also concerned about the government overreach. Why, oh why, does the Department of Education feel the need to track every student in the country to the microlevel?

So it can perform its job more efficiently, of course. That job? To spend vast sums of tax money and acquire more power and budget for itself.

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