Why does UCAS need job title of highest household earner?

[arjybarjy]

I can understand why UCAS might want some broad details about parents' profession and salary, for equalities monitoring, but why do they ask for the exact job title? Many job titles are unique to the individual, so they are very identifying.

I've recommended that my DC chooses "Prefer not to say" or "Don't Know".

Because they have to classify them by socio-economic class for statistical returns.

Well yes, but they don't need the exact job title for that - they need a category, as per the list in your link.

All statistical information is useful so why not? There are two options which mean you don't need to give a job title and unless your job title is eg Prime Minister, how identifying can it be?

What harm do you think will come from ucas having that information?

@Whatevershallidowithmylife
Exactly, Universities cannot make 'contextual offers', without - UCAS are the conduit

@arjybarjy OP - if your DC is applying for Russell Group, I'd avoid advising any ambiguity

If the job title is something generic like plumber or doctor, it's not identifying, but if the job title is Head of X or Director of Y where X and Y are unique then it can be very identifying. In our case the job title identifies a specific role at a specific company, of which there is only one. It's not useful statistically unless someone reads and re-interprets it as a "higher managerial, administrative and professional occupation", or whatever the equivalent is in their classification schemes. Therefore, why can't DC just select the category directly on the form?

Why?

So? Why does it matter if they know that the applicant is the son of the CEO of Tesco (or whatever)?

It matters because it isn't his personal information to divulge, its his parents'.

DS1 put "prefer not to say" and it didn't do him any harm, so DS2 will do the same.

If there's a 'prefer not to say', what's the problem? Most jobs are not identifying. You can say CEO, you don't have to say whether it's CEO of Microsoft or of your five-person second hand car dealership.
I suppose 'Prime Minister' might be quite outing.

Can you vague the title a little eg Head of Jaffa Cake Development becomes Head of Product Development (Biscuits)

Yep, we can obfuscate, or put "prefer not to say". None of this is a problem for us because our son asked our advice on what to write. But the thread is not about us specifically (perhaps I could have worded the op better to make that clearer). It's about the principle of asking 17 year-olds for potentially identifying information about their parents. Job title is personal data under GDPR if a particular individual can be identified from the information.

Ok. I’m sure UCAS has all the data handler registrations required for GDPR that permit it to request and store such information and mandate it to use for strictly limited purposes.

I imagine they don’t ask applicants (we are also doing UCAS this year) to pick from more generic groups as they will get a better and more granular set of socioeconomic data from AI reviewing exact titles than from 17 year olds picking a category quickly and moving on.

Is there somewhere in the small print that tells the applicant to check with the parent for permission before completing?

"I suppose 'Prime Minister' might be quite outing."

I don't know, we've quite a few in the past years?

Someone that high profile will be on linkedin etc and not exactly a secret

Think your just a bit on your high horse and it really makes fuck all difference if its identifying or not really. Just a non issue.

I disagree. You don't have to be high profile to have a unique job title. Many low profile people have unique job titles too. Not everyone is on linkedin, and many who are have privacy restrictions on their profiles.

Just put whatever you'd put on, for example, your DHs car/house insurance application. Pretty sure the computer system doesn't categorise your DHs specific job title.

As I mentioned above, ucas is full of personally identifying data. If your job title is product manager but your surname and your kid’s is sparklepants, you can still be identified.

UCAS will be governed by regulation in how it uses any such data appropriately

If there are genuine issues with people knowing your job title e.g. Head of cyber security at MI5, your employer would have given you a fake job title to use in these situations.

I think you might be overthinking this.

Nobody ploughing through UCAS applications seriously gives a shit what your job title is, and they aren't going to ring your local FB busybody page saying "did you know Mrs.Conspiracy Theory's title is...." (And if your job title is "Head of X department" you just write "head of department ". They don't want your job description in a pdf .

That the information is identifying is a no shit Sherlock moment, surely? They want to know what the child's parent's jobs are. That's all. They don't have time or inclination to then sit and pass judgement.

Wait till you fill in a SF form if you think UCAS want "identifying" information.

Everyone has rights over their personal data under the General Data Protection Regulations. The UCAS form, like most forms, has a privacy statement attached, and candidates have to declare they have read it. However, unless I missed it, the UCAS privacy statement doesn't mention anything about the handling of third parties' personally identifying data. I've seen statements elsewhere (e.g. our bank) that include a line about assuming the person submitting the information has asked permission.

I work with data, so know a fair bit about GDPR. It may be too niche a topic for this forum. 🙃

If you worked with data/GDPR, you'd know you were talking bollocks, so behave yourself.