Can educational institutions share a list of students with third parties?

Educational institutions are bound by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which regulates the privacy of student education records. According to FERPA, an institution cannot freely share lists of students with third parties unless specific conditions are met. One of these conditions includes the sharing of directory information, which is a subset of student information deemed publicly available by the institution, such as a student's name, address, telephone number, and major.

Additionally, institutions must obtain consent from students before disclosing non-directory information. This means that if a list includes information that is not classified as directory information, the institution must ensure that they have obtained proper consent from the students involved. Therefore, sharing a list of students without such qualifications would violate FERPA regulations.

The other choices suggest broader or less regulated sharing opportunities that do not align with FERPA’s privacy standards, making them inconsistent with the law regarding student records.