Skip to Main Content

Privacy Policy

Introduction and scope

This Privacy Policy describes how College Consortium, Inc., doing business as Acadeum (“Acadeum,” “we,” or “us”), collects, uses, shares, and protects personal data when you use the websites, applications, and services we operate, including:

  • Acadeum Course Share, through which participating institutions share courses and their students enroll in courses offered by other institutions;
  • Acadeum Skills Marketplace, an online marketplace where sellers offer courses and certificate programs to learners;
  • Acadeum Transfer, a credit-transfer service through which students record prior coursework, explore programs at participating institutions, and request evaluations of how their credits transfer. Acadeum Transfer may carry the name of a sponsoring consortium or state system, such as the NCICU Transfer site at ncicutransfer.org. Acadeum operates each such site and is responsible for the personal data collected on it;
  • the Acadeum student portal and any student-facing assistant we offer, including chat-based tools; and
  • any other product, service, website, or platform that links to or displays this Privacy Policy.

Together, these are the “Platform.” A “participating institution” is a college, university, employer, consortium, state system, or other organization that has a written agreement with Acadeum to use the Platform. By using the Platform, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform.

This Privacy Policy will change over time. If we make minor changes to the Privacy Policy without materially changing your rights, we will post the modified Privacy Policy on the Platform. We will notify you by email, through the Platform, or by presenting you with an updated Privacy Policy to accept if we make a modification that materially changes your rights. When you use the Platform after a modification is posted, you accept the modified Privacy Policy.

Our Role

Acadeum handles personal data in two situations. When a participating institution provides us with data about its students or employees or directs us to process such data on its behalf, we act as that institution’s service provider. Where that data includes education records covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), we act as a school official with a legitimate educational interest, under the institution’s direct control. The institution’s own privacy notices also apply to that data, and we follow its instructions about use, retention, and deletion. When you give us information directly, for example by creating an account, uploading Academic Records, submitting a request or inquiry, or contacting us, we handle it as described in this Privacy Policy.

What Information We Collect

We collect personal and non-personal data from you when you use the Platform. Personal data is data that includes a personal identifier like your name, email or address, phone number, IP address or device identifier, or is data that could reasonably be linked back to you. It also may include demographic information, geolocation information, educational information, or commercial information as described below.

You may be required to create an account to use the Platform. Students create a Student Account; authorized representatives (or administrators) of a participating institution create an Institution Account. On Acadeum Transfer, students create their own account and select the institution they currently or most recently attended.

Personal data: We receive personal data about you when you create an account, both as a student or as an authorized representative (or administrator) for your organization. We receive further data about you when you update your account or personal profile, enroll in courses, upload or enter Academic Records, submit requests or inquiries to institutions, or otherwise use the Platform. We may also receive data about you (as a student) from our partners (i.e. academic institutions and employers) or from third parties.

From our partners: Our partners may share information about you (as a student or employee) with Acadeum so we can provide them with benefits that they use to manage their students, employees, benefits, courses and programs. Beyond the personal information required to process an enrollment, each partner chooses what it shares with us, which may include your first and last name, mailing address, email address, phone number, employer, job title, gender, date of birth, citizenship, state residency, academic information (including but not limited to Student ID, Field of Study, Matriculation Date, Institution Contact Name such as student advisor’s information). Participating institutions also provide institutional data used by Acadeum Transfer, such as course inventories, course equivalency rules, program inventories, program requirements, and acceptable-grade rules. These are not personal data, but they determine how your records are evaluated. When an institution responds to a request you submitted, it may add evaluation results and notes to your record. Where FERPA applies to data shared by our partners, it is stored, used and shared in compliance with the statute.

From you, your student account and your student profile: As a student, you can choose to share additional information with us, such as an updated email address, phone number, educational records, and answers to questions about your interests and activities that will be covered by this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. You can also share this information by updating your Student Profile on the Platform, uploading documents that include personal information, or answering questions or surveys we email you or present to you on the Platform. We will not use your phone number to send any commercial or marketing messages to you without your consent. We do not collect any personal data about you unless you voluntarily provide it to us or it is provided to us by your institution or employer. However, you may be required to provide certain personal data to us when you elect to use the Platform. This may include, without limitation: (a) registering for an account on Platform; (b) entering a sweepstakes or contest sponsored by us or one of our partners; (c) signing up for special offers from selected third parties; (d) sending us an email message; (e) submitting your credit card or other payment information when ordering and purchasing products and services on the Platform;  (f) registering in, enrolling in, or purchasing a course or other educational product; and (g) recording your academic history or requesting a transfer evaluation. We will use your personal data for, but not limited to, communicating with you in relation to services and/or products you have requested from us. We also may gather additional personal or non-personal information in the future.

Academic Records you provide (Acadeum Transfer and the student assistant):

Transcripts and other academic documents. On Acadeum Transfer you may upload an unofficial transcript or a course list as a PDF, CSV, or spreadsheet, or enter courses by hand. When you upload a document, it is read in your web browser, and the text is sent to our servers so that we can identify your courses. We do not keep the original file. We keep the extracted text for up to 14 days for processing and troubleshooting and then delete it. The course information we extract and save to your account includes the institution attended, course code and title, term and year, grade, and credits, as well as exams, credentials (including credential status and number), and military training you have completed. Uploaded transcripts may also contain your name, student ID number, date of birth, or address; we use this only to match the document to your account.

Documents you share with the student assistant. If you upload a document to the Acadeum student assistant, such as a transcript or degree audit, we keep the file with that conversation so the assistant can refer to it, until you delete the conversation.

Your transfer profile and plans. The institution you currently or most recently attend, the program and institution you are interested in, your expected transfer term, whether you have completed an associate degree or other block-transfer credential you declare (for example, under the North Carolina Independent Comprehensive Articulation Agreement), a self-reported grade point average if you include one in an information request, and, if you choose to share it, your military service background (branch, rank or grade, service status, and notes). You may also add a date of birth, mailing address, and profile photo in account settings.

Attachments to requests. Documents you attach to a transfer request (PDF, Word, Excel, or CSV files up to 4 MB) are stored securely and are visible to the institutions that are party to the request.

Location. If you allow it, your device’s approximate location, which we use to show distances to institutions. You can decline; we will then rely on the address in your profile or show no distance.

Please do not upload information we do not need. Some transcripts include Social Security numbers or other government identifiers. Please remove them before uploading. You are responsible for removing any information we do not need, whether or not it identifies you personally. If we find such information, we may delete it from our systems.

From third parties: We may receive additional information about you from other schools, alumni or career counseling organizations, digital transcript or credential services that you authorize to send your records to us, or from other sources.

Usage and log data: When you visit the Platform, we log and store your IP Address and technical information about your visit like your browser type and how you progressed through the Platform, where you abandoned it, etc. (“Usage Data”). We can use your IP address to determine your general location. We use analytics and error-monitoring services for this purpose, as described under “Cookies and Similar Technologies.”

How We Use Your Personal Data

We use, process and store your personal data to operate the Platform and to provide you with potential courses and programs, and to help you understand and pursue transfer opportunities. This includes:

  • Allowing you to search our inventory of course sections and programs, and to explore courses, equivalencies, and programs at participating institutions.
  • Delivering course and program opportunities and communications from potential partners by email in accordance with your account settings and communication preferences.
  • Allowing you to contact your home institution, a teaching institution or your past, current or future employer through the Platform.
  • Providing data to institutions offering courses or programs in which you seek to register and enroll, or from which you request a transfer evaluation or information.
  • Reading the Academic Records you provide and converting them into structured course data, using automated tools that include third-party artificial-intelligence services (see “Automated Processing and Artificial Intelligence”).
  • Comparing your courses with the equivalency rules, program requirements, and acceptable-grade rules supplied by participating institutions to show you equivalent courses, transfer-status and degree-progress estimates, and block-transfer status.
  • Delivering your transfer requests, evaluation requests, and information requests to the institutions you choose, returning their responses to you, and reminding you of steps that remain.
  • Tailoring communications to your situation, for example to community college transfer students or to military-connected students.
  • Contacting you about additional Acadeum products and services you might be interested in, unless you opt-out (see “How to Opt-Out of Email Communications”).
  • Researching new ways to improve the Platform, including improving the accuracy of automated extraction and equivalency matching using de-identified data.
  • Using FERPA protected data only in compliance with the requirements of the statute.

Automated Processing and Artificial Intelligence

We use third-party artificial-intelligence services to extract structured course information from the text of transcripts and other Academic Records, and, in the Acadeum student assistant, to answer your questions and read documents you share. Our current providers are OpenAI, for transcript extraction, and Anthropic, accessed through Amazon Web Services, for the student assistant. We send these providers only the content needed for the task. Our agreements with them prohibit the use of your data to train their models and require them to delete it after processing.

Automated extraction and evaluation can be inaccurate. You can review and correct the courses extracted from your records at any time in your account. Admission and transfer credit decisions are made by the institutions you apply to, not by automated systems, and Acadeum does not make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you solely by automated means.

When We May Share Your Personal Data

We will only share your personal data under the following circumstances:

  • With the institution associated with your account. If your account is associated with an institution or employer, including the institution you select when you create an Acadeum Transfer account, that organization can view your name, contact information, and account status, personal data you upload through your Student Account, and the details of any request to which it is a party, including attachments.
  • With the institutions you choose. When you submit a transfer request, evaluation request, or course substitution request, the receiving institution sees your name, contact information, the courses and credits relevant to the request, any attachments, and the notes you include. When you click “Request Information” on a program, the receiving institution receives your name, email, phone, preferred contact method, expected transfer term, whether you have completed a degree, the grade point average you enter, and your message, so that it can follow up with you about that program. Institutions may use this information only for the purpose you sent it and are contractually required to safeguard it.
  • With sponsoring consortia, state systems, and funders, in aggregated or de-identified form only. Organizations that sponsor or fund a Transfer site, such as the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities and the foundations supporting the North Carolina transfer initiative, receive usage and outcome statistics. They do not receive your personal records.
  • With your consent in other circumstances, which you may withdraw at any time.
  • With vendors that are contractually engaged to provide us with services, such as cloud hosting (Amazon Web Services), artificial-intelligence services described above, email delivery, customer relationship management, catalog search, analytics and error monitoring, mapping and distance calculation, and credit card processing. These companies are obligated by contract to safeguard any personal data they receive from us and may use it only to provide services for us.
  • With relevant law enforcement bodies if we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation, valid legal process (e.g., subpoenas or warrants served on us), or governmental or regulatory request, to enforce or apply the Terms of Use, to protect the security or integrity of the Platform, and/or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Acadeum, its employees, users, or others. If we are going to release your data, we will do our best to provide you with notice in advance by email, unless we are prohibited by law from doing so.
  • With professional services, potential purchasers or investors in connection with the sale, merger, bankruptcy, sale of assets or reorganization of our company. We will notify you if a different company receives your personal data and the promises in this Privacy Policy will apply to your data as transferred to the new entity.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

When We Use and Share Non-Personal Data

Non-personal data is data that itself cannot reasonably be linked back to you or data that is combined with other data in a way that cannot reasonably be linked back to you. We use and share your non-personal, de-identified or aggregated data in a variety of ways to help our partners and the public understand trends in course and program sharing, credit transfer, and credit mobility through analytics reports, statistics and other metrics and guides. For example, we may report how many courses from one institution were found equivalent to courses at another, without identifying any student.

Cookies

As a Platform user, we place a small piece of software referred to as a “cookie” on your computer. If you use the Platform and create an account, we also use this cookie to recognize you on return visits and expedite the login process. You can remove this and other cookies through your browser preferences menu, though the exact method varies depending on the type of browser you use, but note that you won’t be able to log into the Platform if your cookies are disabled. If you visit from a mobile device, we may reference your device identifier or other information about where your visit originated.

We use Google Analytics to understand how the Platform is used, and an error-monitoring service (Sentry) that records technical details when something goes wrong and may record a sample of user sessions to help us reproduce problems. These recordings can include the content of the pages you view and the information you enter, including academic records. Access to them is limited to staff who need them, and we keep them only as long as we need them to diagnose the problem.

Our email communications contain web beacons or similar technology which track when the email has been opened or read. This functionality sends the resulting records back to the Platform, which may be associated with other information you have provided us.

Security of Your Personal Data

We use industry-standard technical, administrative, and physical controls to protect your personal data. These include encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, hashed passwords and support for single sign-on (SAML), role-based access controls that follow the principle of least privilege, time-limited links for downloading attachments, and hosting in the United States with Amazon Web Services. Access to student data by Acadeum staff is limited to those who need it to operate and support the Platform.

No data transmission over the Internet or method of storage is completely secure. While we take reasonable precautions, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breach will never occur. In the event of a breach affecting your personal data, we will investigate and, where required, notify you and the relevant institutions and authorities in accordance with applicable law.

How to Opt-Out of Email Communications

To stop receiving notifications or promotions, please click the unsubscribe link found at the bottom of each email or update your account preferences. For EEA users: We only send marketing communications to users located in the EEA with your prior consent. Please see the section “GDPR: Information for EEA Users” below.

How Long We Keep Your Data

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, to meet our obligations to the institutions we serve, and to comply with law. In particular:

  • Account and profile data: for as long as your account is active, and afterwards for the period we need it to support your return to the Platform, to resolve disputes, and to meet our obligations to your institution, unless you ask us to delete it sooner.
  • Transcript text extracted from uploaded documents: up to 14 days after upload. The original file is never stored.
  • Courses, exams, credentials, and other Academic Records saved to your account: for as long as your account is retained, or until you remove them or ask us to delete them. An administrator at your institution may also reset your transcript at your request.
  • Transfer requests, evaluation results, and attachments: for as long as your account is retained, and for the period the institutions involved need to document their evaluation and answer questions about it.
  • Student assistant conversations and uploaded files: until you delete the conversation, or until we no longer need it to provide the assistant to you.
  • Data we process for an institution as its service provider: as directed by that institution.

When retention periods end, we delete or de-identify the data. De-identified and aggregated data may be retained indefinitely.

Do Not Track Signals

We are currently unable to respond to Do Not Track signals that may be sent by some browsers.

De-Activating Your Account or Deleting Your Personal Data

Your student account is not a public account. Only the institutions described under “When We May Share Your Personal Data” can see information from it. You may deactivate your account in account settings; deactivation ends access and processing but does not by itself erase your data. You may request that Acadeum delete information about you, and we will do so within 45 days unless we are obligated as a service provider to your organization to retain certain data about you or are required by law to keep it. This means that if your organization re-sends us your data to process on its behalf, we will retain it unless it requests we delete it. You can request deactivation or deletion by sending a message to support@acadeum.com or by contacting your organization to ask them to delete your information.

Third Party Links

The Platform may contain links to and from third party websites of our partners, service providers or advertisers. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for their policies. We also cannot be responsible for your personal data that you submit to any entity using the Platform. Please check their individual policies before you submit any information to those websites.

Children

You must be at least 16 years old to create an account for yourself on the Platform. Students under 16 may still use the Platform when their school or employer creates the account or provides us with their information, which is common for high school students taking college courses through dual enrollment and early college programs. In those cases, the institution is responsible for obtaining any parental consent the law requires, and we handle the information as its service provider. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information directly, please notify us by sending a message to support@acadeum.com, and we will take reasonable measures to remove that information from our systems.

Payments

Acadeum provides the ability for our partners and, on the Skills Marketplace, for students to pay certain fees through a third-party payment processor (currently Stripe). Your full card number is entered directly with the processor and is not stored by Acadeum. We receive confirmation of the transaction and limited details, such as the amount, the last four digits of the card, and the card type, to manage orders, refunds, and invoices. If an Acadeum Partner has any conflicts regarding the method of payment acceptance, they should contact Acadeum. Acadeum claims no responsibility or liability for payment transactions.

Your State Privacy Rights

Residents of California and of other states with comprehensive privacy laws, including Texas, may have the right to:

  • know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose, and receive a copy of it;
  • correct inaccurate personal information;
  • request deletion of personal information;
  • opt out of the sale of personal information, of sharing for the purpose of targeted advertising, and of certain profiling (we do none of these); and
  • be treated without discrimination should you exercise these rights.

More information regarding the sources from which we collect personal information can be found above in the section titled “What Information We Collect”; business and commercial purposes for which we collect your personal information can be found above in the section titled “How We Use Your Personal Data”; categories of recipients with whom personal information is shared or sold can be found in the section above titled “When We May Share Your Personal Data.”

We do not sell any personal information collected from your use of the Platform, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

To make a request under your state’s privacy law, or for any questions or concerns about our Privacy Policy or practices, please contact us at support@acadeum.com. We will verify your identity before acting on a request and will respond within 45 days, extending once, if necessary, as the law allows. You may authorize an agent to make a request on your behalf. If we decline a request, we will explain why and, where the law provides, how to appeal. Because FERPA governs many education records we hold for institutions, some requests must be directed to your institution, and we will tell you when that is the case.

GDPR: Information for EEA Users

What rights do I have?

Individuals located in the European Economic Area (EEA) have certain rights in respect of your personal information and Acadeum will provide these capabilities to all our worldwide users, including:

  • The right to access your personal data;
  • The right to restrict or oppose processing of personal data;
  • The right to erase your personal data;
  • The right to personal data portability; and
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the relevant Supervisory Authority.

As described in this Privacy Policy, when Acadeum processes your data at the direction of your academic institution or employer, we act as their “Processor” and comply with requests they send us under GDPR.

As a Platform user:

  • We rely on your consent as a lawful basis for processing personal data to provide you with marketing or promotional communications and to collect your device location.
  • We process personal data to provide you with benefits and services as requested by your academic institution or employer, or to perform our contract with you as described in this Privacy Policy, including:
    • To enable the Platform to function as expected; to read and evaluate the Academic Records you provide; to deliver your requests and inquiries to the institutions you choose; and
    • To communicate with you in response to customer service inquiries, support, to inform you of updates, modifications and other matters relating to the Platform, and to deliver non-promotional, Platform-related emails.
  • Additionally, we process personal data based on our “legitimate interests” in providing you with the service described in this Privacy Policy including:
    • To provide you with course, program, and transfer enrollment opportunities;
    • To secure the Platform and monitor for errors; and
    • To improve the Platform using de-identified data.

In some cases, Acadeum may process personal information pursuant to a legal obligation or to protect your vital interests or those of another person.

How May I Exercise My Individual Rights

Acadeum account holders may exercise their rights regarding their personal information as follows:

  • You can access your personal data through your account settings in the Platform or by contacting us to request a personal data report at support@acadeum.com.
  • You may withdraw your consent to receive cookies by adjusting your browser settings.
  • You may withdraw your consent to receive marketing or promotional communications at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link found within Acadeum email updates and changing your contact preferences. Please note, you will continue to receive essential account-related information, even if you unsubscribe from promotional emails.
  • You can request deletion of your data as described in the section “De-Activating Your Account or Deleting Your Personal Data.”

Users located within the EEA may contact us at support@acadeum.com with questions or requests regarding their personal information. Please note that Acadeum may request additional information from you to verify your identity before we disclose any personal or account information.

Contact Us and Accessing Your Information

If you have any questions about our privacy practices, or if you wish to remove any of your personal information from our records, please contact us at either:

College Consortium, Inc., dba Acadeum
2028 E. Ben White Blvd., #240-6351
Austin, Texas 78741-6966

or support@acadeum.com.

Effective as of September 21, 2026. Previous version: January 1, 2024.