Understanding FERPA

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 is designed to protect the confidentiality of education records and to give students access to their records to assure the accuracy of their contents. Under FERPA, institutions must allow students who are 18 years or over, or attending a postsecondary institution:

• Access to their education records
• An opportunity to seek to have the records amended (see the Student Handbook for this procedure)
• Variable control over the disclosure of information from the records