UCAS – making profit out of your personal information

Last year, UCAS received £12million for targeted advertising and the selling of student’s email addresses to private companies, essentially exploiting students for profit and further strengthening the argument that education has become a commodity.

The admissions service is designed to process applications and set students up with places at universities and colleges in the UK.  It processes over 700,000 applications a year, all of which include personal information of the individuals, which will now become available. It would seem that UCAS has abused this role at the expense of student’s personal information.

Whilst it is possible for UCAS users to opt out of receiving direct marketing, this would also mean that they no longer receive emails on education and careers.  A sly move by UCAS to try and squeeze every penny they can out of students.

School leavers: warned if they opt out of the advertising they run the risk of missing career opportunities.

Whilst there is no evidence to suggest that UCAS is breaking any kind of privacy laws, it is the immorality of the situation that is disgusting.  When services make profit their priority, it can be at the expense of the service user.  In this case, it is the privacy of students applying to university, and with UCAS boasting that it is a ‘£15 million market’, who knows how far they could go.

UCAS lures in potential investors in with the slogan “We help them reach uni – we help you reach them.”  But why would already cash-strapped students want to be reached by companies looking to sell them things?

Emma Carr, deputy director of the privacy lobby group Big Brother Watch said,

“UCAS is perfectly within the law to sell on this information, but…it goes far beyond what students would expect them to do with their data.  Students should be explicitly asked for their permission before UCAS can sell their information on and UCAS should be open and transparent about who it is selling the data on to.”

Another major problem is the fact that the main users of UCAS are 18 or under.  This brings up a whole serious of problems with regard to the protection of young people against the exploitation of their personal data as, under the law, they are treated exactly the same as adults.  We need to start being more supportive of young people when it comes to educating them about the dangers of sharing their data so freely.

Many would argue that as the government does not fund UCAS, then it needs some way of keeping down the price of applying for university or college.  Whilst I’d agree, it doesn’t seem that exploiting young people for their personal information is the right way to go about it.  At the end of the day UCAS should be there to guide us through the difficult application process – as soon as it starts being run to make money then its interests change.  It no longer has as much concern for its users as it does for the private companies exploiting said users.

With the government already using students and seeing them as a way of making money, we don’t need another organisation doing the same.  We need to make the case that education is a right, not a way for private companies to use us as cash cows.