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Data Protection sneaked into the newspapers again this weekend: Saturday's Guardian and today's Telegraph carried articles on the degree result checking service being set up by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and Experian, the credit reference agency. Employers will pay GBP35 to Experian for them to check the institution attended, dates, subjects studied and grades achieved by prospective employees. Saturday's Guardian reported that "To comply with data protection rules, employers will have to seek an applicant's permission before consulting Experian but to refuse may reflect badly on a job candidate". I understand that HESA was originally set up to analyse and report on HE statistics. Though I note from their Register Entry that they are registered under "P018 Trading in Personal Information". This was news to me. I should be interested in reading colleagues views on this. Graham PS: I expect most university Student Records offices would be more than happy to offer employers a bargain priced confirmation of results service undercutting HESA! ------------------------------------------------- Graham Robinson, Senior Administrative Officer Registrars Department, Main Building Room B13 UMIST, PO BOX 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Telephone 0161 200 8890 Fax 0161 200 3635 ------------------------------------------------- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%