Another topic involving privacy has attracted considerable attention in recent months--the "student unit record" issue. The U.S. Department of Education concluded in March that it would be feasible to help address lawmakers' concerns about accountability in higher education by constructing a database capable of tracking students from institution to institution and thus producing more accurate information on graduation rates. The Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) feasibility study said that the database would be "technologically protected and secure" and said that "there are no cases where individually identifiable data collected by NCES have been wrongfully disclosed by an employee, a contractor, or a restricted licensee, or of cases in which hackers have breached IES/NCES firewalls." This brief article provides an overview of these recent events.