Students fear for their data privacy after University of California invests in private equity firm
College students within California’s premier research university system are wondering if their privacy is safe after learning that the University of California (UC) made a commitment to invest $200 million in an investment firm that has access to vast troves of student data through a subsidiary. The private equity investment firm, Thoma Bravo, announcing that it was purchasing the educational software firm Instructure Inc. in December in an all-cash deal for roughly $2 billion, an acquisition that was completed in March. Instructure Inc. owns Canvas, a popular virtual classroom platform. Given the platform’s popularity within higher education institutions, Instructure has data on grades, lectures, tests, papers and more from tens of thousands of students.
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by Matthew Rozsa, Salon.