This doesn't sound that surprising to me. Because of the Education Privacy
Act schools need to be a little paranoid. If they are allowing you and your
student access to other students' private educational records it seems that
they would have every right to protect themselves by requiring such approval
to publish. They need to make certain that you aren't revealing information
which could leave the school open to litigation. You should talk to the
registrar and make sure this is their rationale. If it was something else
(e.g., they wouldn't want the world to know how low their standards really
are, or their true graduation rates, etc., ) THEN you can get annoyed. But
this could be an innocent, good faith provision to protect the university.
Ed
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Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West Chester, PA 19383
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Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, herpetoculturist and
bluegrass fiddler
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> Have any of you encountered a situation in which empirical research
> conducted by a student under faculty supervision (or by a faculty person
> for
> that matter) has been "censored" by the institution?
> The research is still in the proposal stage, but we cannot obtain approval
> to proceed without inclusion of a statement that the results of the
> research
> cannot be presented or published without the permission of our college.
> The
> research concerns predictors of student retention. The student, an
> outstandingly promising psychology major who hopes to go on to graduate
> school, is quite frustrated because if she completes the study she may not
> be able to present it or publish it in any form without "permission" --
> potentially preventing her from being able to demonstrate that she has
> conducted and presented or published research when she wants to apply to
> graduate programs.
>
> I feel like there are issues of academic freedom and of proper scientific
> methodology involved here (I was taught -- and teach -- that the scientist
> has the responsibility to make the results of empirical work publicly
> available), but also the educational issue of failing to facilitate the
> academic development of a student.
>
> If you have encountered such a situation, I would appreciate hearing about
> how it was handled or resolved (you can reply to me back channel at
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> If you haven't encountered anything like this but have any wise advise for
> proceeding, I'd appreciate that as well.
>
> Thanks,
> Deb Hume
