Some Universities Make Millions Of Dollars From Initiative of Selling Student Information
From WSMV News, Channel 4 Nashville, Tennesse, Reported by Caroline Moses
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- E-mails, cell phone numbers and home addresses are all information people like to keep private. But a Channel 4 I-Team investigation found that information is for sale. It turns out state universities are selling students and alumni personal information to companies.
It's not that the information should be kept secret; it is, after all, public record. But it's the lengths to which some schools go and just how much money they make helping companies solicit alumni and students.
Jennifer Edwards has many more junk e-mails to delete these days, thanks to her alma mater.
“I appreciate all the extra trash e-mails I have to go through now, thank you,” said Edwards.
Solicitors send Edwards mailers and e-mails as well as call her cell phone ever since she started school at Middle Tennessee State University . She said she never knew how the businesses had her information.
“I've received e-mails from some of these companies that I have no dealings with, that I know there’s no way I gave you my e-mail address,” said Edwards.
Administrators at MTSU, the University of Memphis and all of the schools in the University of Tennessee system sell student information.
MTSU alone has sold student information just in the last year to everything from apartment complexes to churches to book stores. The university doesn't keep specific records of how much profit it makes selling this kind of information.
But UT does. It has made more than $20 million since 1998 selling Tennessee students' information to Chase Bank. School officials said the bank primarily wants alumni names, but as part of that contract, they get students' names too. That means if anyone or their children attended UT any time after 1998, the bank likely has their information.
“I wish I could get, like, a piece of it for my name, like $100 or something, maybe $200,” said student Eton Moore.
Businesses sometimes request students' names and addresses. Other times, they request tailored lists of student information to fit their interests. For example, a textbook business asked only for new freshmen and transfer students' information. Another business, an apartment complex, asked for a list of all students still living on-campus.
Students the I-Team spoke with said it's an invasion of privacy.
“To know if I live on campus or not, I don’t want people to know that without me giving them the OK,” said Edwards.
So why do schools sell this information? UT told the I-Team by phone that the issue was "common" and "old."
MTSU said it has no choice. If businesses want student information, under the state’s open records law, universities have to provide them with students' names and addresses.
And MTSU's Vice President of Business and Finance John Cothern knows the businesses want it badly.
“We have, if you will, a captive audience, and everyone has been sensitive to that. We don’t want our students to be hounded commercially,” said Cothern.
But at the same time, for a fee, MTSU often provides student information on mailing labels, making it even easier for students to get solicited in the mail.
“When you become a student here, you have to give them all of that information, which you think is just in a records office somewhere, not being sold to many companies,” said Edwards.
After the I-Team started asking questions, school officials now say they will charge lower and more uniform rates for student information and stop catering to marketers by printing mailing labels for them.
“Some of it has continued on, and we've instructed the offices now to no longer do that,” said Cothern.
“I didn’t know anything about that,” said Moore .
“If it's going on, we should know,” said incoming junior Ethan Walden.
In a written statement, a UT spokeswoman said, "Students are not allowed to be solicited for credit card information until they become alumni."
As for the school's $26 million profit, school officials said it's used for scholarships and alumni-funded projects. But again, no one told the students or alumni about this because there are no rules or laws requiring them to do so.
“They're paying for our names? Yes, it's not right at all,” said Moore .
“I just assumed the university would have it on their file or whatever. That's kind of, you have to give them that information,” said Walden.
“I did not know this was going on, and it frustrates me. I pay a lot of money to go here and would at least like to know if you are going to do that,” said Edwards.
There is something students can do. At the beginning of each semester, they can opt out of inclusion in the student directory. That means no one would see their information -- neither businesses nor other students.
Also, federal laws passed in 2008 now basically eliminate student solicitation for credit cards. But UT officials said this contract was "grandfathered in."
The University of Memphis sold student information only to branches of the military, charging two cents per enrolled student for a total of about $400.
