Compliance Training

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), as amended (sometimes referred to as the Buckley Amendment), is a federal law that protects the privacy of education records of all students enrolled in schools beyond the high school level. Schools are required to maintain that privacy, primarily by restricting release of records and the access provided to those records. Any educational institution that receives funds under any program administered by the U.S. Secretary of Education is bound by FERPA requirements. Institutions that fail to comply with FERPA may have funds administered by the Secretary of Education withheld. The U.S. Department of Education maintains a website with information about FERPA.

The University of San Diego’s Office of the Provost, Department of Human Resources, and the Compliance Committee recently came together to discuss FERPA’s impact on various employee positions and to ensure that all employees (including faculty, administrators, staff, and students) are in compliance with this important federal law. The outcome of that collaboration was a new FERPA training assignment that was issued in March of 2017 via our third-party training vendor, Foundry.

Any employees who have completed FERPA training since March of 2017 have met their requirement until our retraining cycle in 2021. All new employees (including faculty, administrators, staff, and students) are required to complete this training.

New Employees

All employees (including faculty, administrators, staff, and students) who are required to complete FERPA training will receive an automated training assignment from the Foundry system, typically within their first week of employment.

First, an employee must submit his or her new hire paperwork to HR. HR then processes this paperwork, typically in a 2-3 day window. During this time, the employee must claim his or her USDOne credentials, since the FERPA training is issued via email. (Instructions for claiming a USDOne account can be found here.) After the paperwork is processed and USDOne credentials are established, the Foundry system will automatically issue the FERPA training assignment to the new employee via email.

A few important notes:

• This process is now automated, and therefore, there is no need for supervisors to request the FERPA training assignment in advance. If a new employee hasn't received a FERPA training assignment by the third day after their paperwork has been submitted to HR, supervisors should then contact hrlearning@sandiego.edu.
• In accordance with California Wage and Labor laws, employees will not be issued this training before they officially begin work at the University.
• Faculty who have not received their teaching contracts should contact their academic department for assistance.
• Supervisors of unpaid graduate assistants or teaching assistants on campus who would like to issue FERPA training as a best practice should review our Guidelines for FERPA Training for Unpaid Teaching Assistants. This document details how non-employees can complete FERPA training, as the process is different than what is detailed above.

For any specific questions about this process, please contact hrlearning@sandiego.edu.