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This article is pretty sloppy, mixing up students in different parts of the process. And given the headline about ranking students "before they apply", the open

This article is pretty sloppy, mixing up students in different parts of the process. And given the headline about ranking students "before they apply", the opening anecdote is seriously misleading. The student visited the university website after applying, so the tracking software linked the visit back to the profile full of information the student had directly provided to the school's admissions office. That feels skeevy, especially if they aren't clear about it when you are applying, but the implication given the headline is that this detailed profile just popped up the first time the student visited the university website, which is not the case. None of this is remotely new, of course. Colleges have been collecting information from standardized test companies and market researchers and building profiles of individual students for decades. I got mailboxes full of solicitations to apply to X or Y school 25 years ago when I was in high school, and now my daughter is dealing with the same. Later, the article gets around to actual conflicts of interest and ethical issues. But the headline and the opening story are grossly misleading.

mnky9800n 7y ago
as someone who is on the research side of university education, i think its rather outrageous how easily the admissions people can collect data on students without any sort of informed consent whatsoever. If my research group did it this way, we would be out of job, and even tenures could be in jeopardy.
- lukeschlather 7y ago
  It's kind of outrageous the hoops we make nonprofit researchers operating transparently jump through when for-profit researchers who hide their results can basically do whatever they like as long as they make money. Of course, I guess that's the thing here: the admissions officers are working for a nonprofit but they are a key part of revenue generation.
- extra88 7y ago
  IRBs exist to protect academic integrity, that's not a factor in other contexts. A staff member can collect and use data that could be associated with individuals as a part of improving some part of a university's operations but an academic would have to jump through those hoops to do the same for their research.
Bartweiss 7y ago
It's hard for me to believe this is just sloppiness, even. The headline, subhead, and podcast link all say "before they apply". The lede is the story of a student visiting the site and being profiled, and all of the data listed could plausibly have come from somewhere outside an application. It's only ten paragraphs later that the article returns to the initial story and clarifies that the profile was derived from her application. The use of cookies in this way is novel for universities, if not for other sites. And some of the other moves like classifying contractors as "school officials" look like blatant attempts to bypass privacy laws. But the headline here vastly oversells what's happening; the amount of data available prior to an application doesn't seem much different than what I remember getting in unsolicited university ads. That's been happening at the very least since the College Board decided to sell all sorts of exam information to universities.

mnky9800n 7y ago

as someone who is on the research side of university education, i think its rather outrageous how easily the admissions people can collect data on students without any sort of informed consent whatsoever. If my research group did it this way, we would be out of job, and even tenures could be in jeopardy.

lukeschlather 7y ago
It's kind of outrageous the hoops we make nonprofit researchers operating transparently jump through when for-profit researchers who hide their results can basically do whatever they like as long as they make money. Of course, I guess that's the thing here: the admissions officers are working for a nonprofit but they are a key part of revenue generation.
extra88 7y ago
IRBs exist to protect academic integrity, that's not a factor in other contexts. A staff member can collect and use data that could be associated with individuals as a part of improving some part of a university's operations but an academic would have to jump through those hoops to do the same for their research.

Bartweiss 7y ago

It's hard for me to believe this is just sloppiness, even. The headline, subhead, and podcast link all say "before they apply". The lede is the story of a student visiting the site and being profiled, and all of the data listed could plausibly have come from somewhere outside an application. It's only ten paragraphs later that the article returns to the initial story and clarifies that the profile was derived from her application. The use of cookies in this way is novel for universities, if not for other sites. And some of the other moves like classifying contractors as "school officials" look like blatant attempts to bypass privacy laws. But the headline here vastly oversells what's happening; the amount of data available prior to an application doesn't seem much different than what I remember getting in unsolicited university ads. That's been happening at the very least since the College Board decided to sell all sorts of exam information to universities.