FERPA
The US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of student education records — including lecture, advising and interview recordings — at schools and universities that receive federal funding.
FERPA protects education records tied to identifiable students. When a recording — a recorded lecture, an advising session, a research interview with a student — is an education record, transcribing it is covered by the same rules.
Sending that audio to a third-party cloud transcription service can require consent, or reliance on the “school official” exception with strict contractual controls over how the vendor uses and retains the data. On-prem processing keeps education records on institution-controlled systems and avoids the exposure entirely. FERPA is most relevant to universities, research labs and ed-tech teams handling classroom or interview audio; it sits alongside, not inside, HIPAA and GDPR.