Several paradoxes in the treatment of administrative information by universities are discussed. Since certain types of information have important economic value to educational institutions, there develops a conflict of interests, a collision between the schools' fiduciary responsibility for their students and their institutional responsibility to survive and, if possible, thrive. History seems to suggest that, where the control of information is concerned, most schools chose to opt for survival. Prior to regulation, virtually all schools maintained absolute domination of the flow of administrative information between their students and themselves. This fact alone should explain the recent imposition of outside regulation, and should vitiate schools' claims that such regulation somehow interferes with their educational function. Where difficulty remains is in the law itself. While it has responded to a problem that is one of economic valuation, of sociological distribution of power, that response has not consistently been phrased in the terms of the problem. By focusing attention on privacy rather than power, on access rather than flow, legislation like the Buckley Act diverts attention from the actual nature of the underlying difficulty. Until the legal remedy more closely fits the nature of the ailment, paradoxical symptoms will continue to cause trouble. (Author/MSE)