The thing is, I don't need that training to recognize that they are failing to contribute to society. This is why I'm saying that it is indeed a dodge. "It's complicated and you don't understand it" isn't an excuse for making the world worse. And yes, it is fully possible for a someone to make that judgement without a large background in law, because it's taking a holistic look at "what was the purpose of this law, and are they interpreting it in line with that purpose?" The details don't matter; the outcomes do. Their job is to deal with the details to reach the desired outcomes. If society is better off for putting them on a boat and sending them into the middle of the ocean, then they are incompetent.

Refusing to give a student their own data because of a privacy law that's meant to give the student control over their data is them failing. Full stop. There's no room for excuses for government funded entities to act in the exact opposite way that they are supposed to to avoid their fear of government imposed penalties from a deliberate misinterpretation of what the entire thing is about. That's incompetence by everyone involved. It is people going out of their way to make the world a worse place to act important. Absolutely unacceptable.