Education Policy, Business and Technology

What GDPR Means for U.S. Higher Education

Campus Technology: On May 25, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect. Like their counterparts in the business world, U.S. colleges and universities are scrambling to figure out how the rules apply to their overseas programs as well as the data they collect on students and employees who are E.U. citizens.

Perhaps the headline on a May 15 opinion piece in The New York Times epitomizes attitudes on U.S. campuses: "Europe's Data Protection Law Is a Big, Confusing Mess." The author, Alison Cool, a professor of anthropology and information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, calls the law "staggeringly complex," "intentionally ambiguous" and "based on already outdated assumptions about technology." (Of course, the only thing regulated organizations hate more than a regulation that is too ambiguous is one that is too specific.)

Read article