> For instance, using name matching alone, you can clearly identify the full name of a student at University of Central Oklahoma, what state she’s from, where she went to undergrad, and where she shops for gas. ...and do what, exactly?
My parents never used to let me use my real name on the internet, even for productive content that I'd choose to take credit for. The fact that I exist doesn't expose me to pedophiles. Any idiot can buy a copy of the middle school phone directory and see my name, address, and phone number. A pedophile looking for children to molest would get more for his effort in a parked car a block away from school at 3:00 than in…
I don't know about the University of Central Oklahoma, but this would be explicitly prohibited at the University of Waterloo.
There's a specific policy that covers access to student information: https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guideli...
Granted, you could figure these things out by scraping students' public Facebook profiles, but I think that says more about Facebook than it does about whether {full name, alta mater} is PII.