How long colleges must keep student, financial-aid and academic records, why a retired SIS still has to retain them, and how a secure archive meets FERPA and Title IV rules. General guidance, not legal advice.
FERPA governs the privacy of and access to student education records. It does not set a fixed retention period, but records must stay protected and access-controlled for as long as you hold them.
Federal student-aid rules generally require records to be retained for a set period after the award year (commonly around three years, with some record types tied to the loan/program and longer). Confirm the exact rule for each record type.
Registrars commonly retain academic transcripts permanently (per AACRAO guidance), while other student records follow state law and institutional policy.
The practical result: when an SIS is retired, most of its records must remain intact, protected and retrievable for years — so you archive rather than delete. Always confirm specific periods with your registrar, financial-aid office and legal/compliance team.
A read-only archive keeps records intact for the full window and reconciles to source to prove nothing was lost.
Role-based read-only access with full audit logging — the access control FERPA expects and the audit trail Title IV reviews want.
Registrars and aid offices search by student, ID, term or program and export for transcript requests and audits — no legacy SIS login.
Meet retention on a low-cost archive instead of paying to keep the whole SIS/ERP alive for read access.
It varies by record type: FERPA governs privacy (not a fixed period); Title IV financial-aid records generally have a retention window (often around three years after the award year, longer for some records); and transcripts are commonly kept permanently. Confirm specifics with your registrar and compliance team.
No — FERPA governs the privacy of and access to education records, not how long to keep them. Retention periods come from Title IV rules, state law, accreditation and institutional policy.
Yes — archive the student, aid and academic records to a secure, read-only store with reporting access, then retire the SIS. The archive satisfies retention while you stop paying for the legacy system.
Academic transcripts are commonly retained permanently per registrar (AACRAO) guidance, so they must survive any SIS retirement — a key reason to archive rather than delete.
Tell us your source systems — PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, Ellucian Banner or Colleague, Jenzabar — and whether you’re migrating to cloud or archiving for FERPA/Title IV. We’ll scope it.