Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)

FERPA protects the privacy of students’ education records. Complete information on Boston University’s policies under FERPA is available here.

• Those policies prohibit BU faculty members from providing specific information regarding individual students to anyone outside the university.
• In particular, you cannot give information about grades, attendance, or other performance assessments to parents or guardians.
• You can, however, share this information with agents of the University such as CAS Advising, the Registrar, etc.
• Exceptions to FERPA rules are in place for CAS Advising and other BU offices, primarily for extraordinary circumstance requiring notification of parents. These exceptions do not generally apply to faculty members.
• If parents or others contact you directly for academic information about a student and will not take “no” for an answer, you can refer them to a FERPA liaison: Daryl Healea (dhealea@bu.edu), Kerry Buglio (kbuglio@bu.edu), or Steve Jarvi (sjarvi@bu.edu).
• CAS liaisons can also answer your questions about other specific provisions and applications of FERPA at BU.