Dear FERPA Professors,
Our four-year institution is looking to establish a stronger partnership with our neighboring two-year institution.
There are conversations about if we can capture a FERPA consent to release to the other institution when the student completes the admission application and then (until FERPA consent is revoked) share the student’s transcript and data back and forth between both institutions.
The Registrar side is hesitant about this, but are there key concerns that you see with this approach?
Sincerely,
Sharing Is (S)caring
Dear Sharing Is (S)caring,
It is true that the most legally flexible method is to obtain written consent from the student under 34 C.F.R. § 99.30. However, the consent must specify the records to be disclosed, the purpose of the disclosure, and the institution or class of institutions receiving the records. As long as the consent meets these requirements, the institution could disclose PII from education records to the two-year institution. It is also worth noting that there is no general FERPA authority for an institution to disclose or redisclose education records to a former institution without the student’s consent. This means the written consent the student provided to the institution is what makes the initial transfer lawful, but that consent does not carry forward to authorize the former two-year institution to make further disclosures. Any further sharing by the two-year institution requires its own independent FERPA basis. In other words, because the former two-year institution is a FERPA-covered entity, the records are protected on both ends of the transfer. The four-year institution needs the student’s consent to send the records. The former two-year institution, upon receiving them, must treat them as education records it maintains and cannot redisclose them without the student’s consent or a valid FERPA exception. I hope this is helpful.
AACRAO members, join the New FERPA Community on the AACRAO Exchange, or send your questions to the FERPA Professor at communications@aacrao.org.
Get the Addendum to the 2012 Guide, “Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Student Privacy Under FERPA: An Addendum to the AACRAO 2012 FERPA Guide,” from the AACRAO Bookstore.
Register for the new webinar series “Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Student Privacy Under FERPA – A Six-Part Webinar Series” running from August 2026 to January 2027.
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