The Family Educational Right to Privacy Act was designed to protect the privacy of student education records, to establish the right of students to inspect and review your education records, and to provide guidelines for the correction of inaccurate or misleading data through informal and formal hearings. As a student at MSU, you should become familiar with your rights under the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act.

Unless otherwise requested, directory information may be shared without consent. To avoid the release of directory information, students may submit, in person, a Suppress Directory Information Form to the Office of the Registrar. Students who have completed a Suppress of Directory Information form must appear in person and provide picture ID to access educational records or receive university services.

 

Students control access to their grades by ordering official transcripts through their MyInfo site, or by printing a worksheet from their Degreeworks.

Some Offices on campus do have FERPA releases; these releases only allow them to release certain functionally-specific information to specific individuals at the request of the student.

  • For records including financial aid, scholarship and billing/account information, please complete and submit the University Business ServicesFERPA release form to the Business Office.
  • For records including financial aid, scholarship and billing/account information, please complete and submit the Financial Aid OfficeFERPA release form to the Financial Aid Office.
  • Students using VA educational benefits who wish to allow access to information may complete a FERPA Release form through the Veteran Services Office.

Montana State University provides information about students that is requested by military recruiters under requirements of the Solomon Amendment. Under this federal law military recruiters may request the following information: Name, current mailing address (as provided by the student) including email address, current telephone number (as provided by the student), age, class level (e.g., freshman, sophomore, etc.), and academic major. The information may be requested for the immediately previous term, current term, or future term for all students age 17 and older who are or were registered at MSU for at least 1 credit in the requested term. Recruiters may request this information each term. Recruiters may not obtain any information that is not in the above list of student recruiting information. For example, they may not request any of the following: Social Security Number or ID Number, place of birth, race/ethnicity/nationality, grades and GPA, grades of low-performing students, religious affiliation, names of students with loans in default, veteran status, or names of students no longer enrolled at MSU. Institutions that do not comply with the Solomon Amendment risk losing federal funding from the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Transportation. Institutions do not risk losing student-aid funding such as Perkins Loans, Federal SEOG or Work-Study funds.

You may need to request a school official to write a letter of recommendation for you.

This usually would not require your written permission, but if the letter includes information that falls within FERPA's definition of educational records; for example, grade point average, class ranking or grades, your written consent in required to release this information.