In the May 9, 2008 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporter David Glenn describes the privacy debate over "unit-record tracking" systems. CCRC’s Director Thomas Bailey is quoted several times in the article.

"Being able to follow students longitudinally is the key to any sophisticated understanding of how colleges are doing and what's happening to students," says Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University's Teachers College…Despite this potential analytic power, many states have shied away from creating robust data systems. That has partly to do with a lack of resources and expertise, Mr. Bailey says. But it also has to do with nervousness about federal and state privacy laws.

CCRC’s research in Washington State is cited as an example of how such systems can be beneficial.  

 “In an influential 2005 study, one of Mr. Bailey's Teachers College colleagues used a large database in Washington State to look at the wages of nontraditional students several years after they entered community college. That study found that for students who begin community college at the age of 25 or older, there is a positive "tipping point": After a student earns 10 or more college credits, future wages tend to improve, even if the student never earns a degree. Below that threshold, community college does not seem to do these students much economic good. That pattern would have been hard to detect without a large-scale data system like Washington's."

--The full-length article in The Chronicle of Higher Education can be found at http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i35/35a01001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en (subscription may be required).