Speaking from the Devil's Advocate side, as I work in Higher Education analytics: First: this data is, by the vast majority of institutions, used very respectfully in terms of privacy rights and it is ABSOLUTELY never sold. Third part vendors that provide hosted systems are REQUIRED to affirm that they pass nothing on to any other party whatsoever. (I should note that this is the case in public and traditional privat…
Thanks for the respectful and nuanced take. I am somewhat concerned with where this stuff leads, not because I assume it's a one step process between education analytics and oppressive dystopia, but precisely because the use cases you describe seem like great ideas. I agree that minimizing drop-out rates is important, and that we should avail ourselves of whatever tools we can to do it. What you're describing does no…
To address misuse in general: That is always a problem, with any technology, tool, data... anything. It's important that we don't discard useful tools due to potential misuse though. Instead, it's of the utmost importance that, at the outset, issues of misuse be enumerated, discussed, mitigation strategies thought out, how to accurately talk about data gathered, the insights obtained, what they can and cannot be used for from a statistical analysis (correlation != causation etc. type of thing) and so on. Let me talk a little about what we did at my institution along these lines. It wasn't perfect, we could have done better, but in the outlines I think it formed a pretty good starting place for a template of how society should engage in conversations about issues that arise from the current revolution in our ability to gather data on individuals:
In 2014 we started using an LMS system that made data collection on easy. I was given sole access to that data to begin exploring and cataloging the available data being collected, it's possible uses, potential points of concern. I had sole access, but those things I was looking for were done in intense conversation with administrative and faculty colleagues, including the university executive board and the faculty union and faculty senate along with conversations with students. During this process, no else had the level of unfettered access that I did (I am a data analyst) not even the system administrators. (Technically they could have granted themselves access though, but if they didn't go through the proper channels, such a thing is a firing offense.)
This went on for about three years, all the while I was able to accumulate data and evaluate it against actual student performance and validate its utility and continue to report back on my findings to further the discussions going on. When that stage of actually using the data to drive conversations ended, I took a step back and simply spoke at gatherings every once in a while to go over what I'd done, findings, etc. After that, for the next two years, it was in the hands of the administration working up policies in conversation with faculty surrounding expectations for responsible use of this information. To say there were disagreements would be an understatement. But over time tentative points of compromise were reached, and for the past 2 years were have begun carefully rolling out initiatives that utilize all of this. We are cautious. We are open. We continue to have conversations with valid concerns on all sides that we seek good compromises for.
Again, the above wasn't perfect, but it's a good outline of how responsible use of data should be approached.