Card, mobile credential, payment and security
User education, card material important to success
It may seem easy: tap the card against the reader and wait for the door to unlock. That’s the basic premise behind contactless smart cards for physical access control.
Contactless technology is touted as being more durable than magnetic stripe systems because there’s no direct contact with a reader that could cause damage to the card. All the components of a contactless card are safely tucked away inside the card body.
This is true, for the most part, but contactless issuers also need to make sure cardholders are properly educated on how to use and care for the card. This spring, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn., experienced what seemed to be an unusually high number of problems with its contactless cards.
At most a couple hundred students have had issues, primarily when using the card to gain access to the dorms, says John Meriano, Quinnipiac’s section vice president for Administrative Services.
“It’s the strangest thing, it’s like we had this little hot spot of card problems,” said Meriano. “We were hoping that it was due to one rogue reader, but that wasn’t the case.”
Instead of being a technology problem he labels it a problem with educating the students on proper card maintenance.
Bending contactless cards can lead to problems with the antenna and chip, explains Meriano. There are still individuals who use their plastic cards to scrape ice of windshields, pry open doors and conduct a variety of other damaging acts. At Quinnipiac they even had a card come in with teeth marks, he says.
The failure rate of contactless cards can range from .25% to 5%, says Brad McGoran, principal engineer at Exponent Inc., a company that test cards and readers for durability, reliability and conformance to industry standards.
He explains that these rates are comparable to magnetic stripe cards because failure rates are less a product of the ID technology than the actual card.
“Failure rates of these technologies are dominated by the failure rates of the underlying card body itself,” McGoran says. “The failure of the card body can be expected to affect the magnetic stripe or contactless card equally. We have seen cards returned from the field that have suffered partial or full cracks through the card structure that in turn severed the magnetic stripe or embedded contactless antenna.”
HID Global estimates that its contactless cards can have a 10-year lifespan and some of the newer technology can last 20-years, explains Stephane Ardiley, senior product marketing manager at the company.
Like McGoran, she says that the key is the card body material. PVC is designed to last for two to three years but polycarbonate has a 10-year lifespan, Ardiley says. Composite cards made of a combination of PVC, polycarbonate and other materials can last five to 15-years.
For magnetic stripe environments, card fracture and surface wear are the dominant failure modes, McGoran explains. “Due to their usage profile, contactless cards do not generally experience the same amount of wear as magnetic stripe cards, but there is a trade-off as they do have their own distinct failure mode, namely chip and antenna breakage,” he says. “We have seen antenna and/or chip breakage occurring in some populations, especially when cards are subjected to abnormal stress.”
Magnetic stripe cards can suffer other failures beside damage to the physical stripe, Ardiley says. “The mag-stripe is sensitive to external magnetic fields,” she adds.
Blackboard, which supplies the campus card system at Quinnipiac, says that contactless has higher reliability and is faster than magnetic stripe, says Jeff Staples, vice president of marketing and business development at Blackboard. “Reliability of that transaction is important, whether the student is buying a soft drink or sitting outside the dorm at 2 am,” he says.
Exponent recommends cardholder education to help prevent failure of internal circuitry that can arise when cards are hole-punched, excessively bent or used as ice scrapers.
“From a durability perspective, Exponent has subjected purely contactless cards to a wide variety of tests in which the card structure has failed with relatively few corresponding adverse effects on the embedded chip itself,” McGoran says.
HID tests the chip and antenna on each card before it’s issued to make sure there’s no failure, Ardiley says. This means when a card fails it has to do with damage in the field or other issues. HID also offers issuers a lifetime warranty on it cards in case there is a problem.
Blackboard also tests its cards before they are issued to students and when cards come back they undergo a lab test to see what happened. Blackboard doesn’t offer a warranty but will resolve issues if there is a manufacturing problem.
Problems can also arise when the card uses both magnetic stripe and contactless, Staples says. One school had both technologies on the card and different departments used the IDs differently. One was using the magnetic stripe for physical access and had a hotel-style lock–one where the card is dipped down. With some students–likely those that used a bit extra torque on their dipping motion–this caused stress on the chip and antenna and lead to problems with the contactless interface.
Such issues convinced Blackboard to work proactively with schools to educate students on card care, Staples says. “You need basic requirements for care and handling … if I bend a contactless card excessively, there is a likelihood of damage,” he says. “We see improvement as deployments progress because students become aware of how to take care of these cards.”
Outside of problems with the cards, schools also need to know that the components of the systems–different readers–are interoperable, McGoran says. “Compliance of disparate components with industry standards does not always ensure interoperability of those components since the standards often are written to have flexibility,” he adds. The convenience of flexibility has the potential be the downfall of interoperability.”
Exponent recommends that schools purchase components from reputable manufacturers and to do testing to make sure they work properly in the system. “With proper pre-deployment component and system-level testing however, agencies and issuers can help guarantee the proper reliability, functionality and success of their programs,” McGoran says.
Students at University of Detroit Mercy have mixed reactions about the school’s new rule requiring students, faculty and staff to wear their ID badges while on campus.
The reason for the rule is simple. The ID policy is part of a broader security system, said Tamara Batcheller, associate vice president for facilities management. “I don’t think any one thing is going to get us the perfect security system and I don’t think there is such a thing as perfect security.”
Still, she says “campus security will be significantly increased” by the ID requirement.
There was no specific reason for the new rule but Batcheller said that thefts on the university campus indicated there was a need for greater security.
The IDs can easily pinpoint those who shouldn’t be on campus, someone who Batcheller said wouldn’t be on campus for any legitimate reason.
“I think sometimes people have a false sense of reality of how they (outsiders) get on campus,” she said. “The legitimate people usually drive or walk on to campus, but those who come on campus for other reasons try to find ways to get on campus without having to go past somebody.”
Read more here.
San Marcos, Tex. authorities have busted a fake driver license scheme that provided licenses to some Texas State University students.
The 20-year-old sophomore engineering student, Jake Waldrep, has been charged with 14 counts of delivery or manufacture of a counterfeit instrument.
The investigation first gained steam a month ago when a doorman at one of the bars near campus noticed one individual attempting to use a fake driver license.
Numerous other individuals whom police believe Waldrep had supplied the fake licenses to, were later identified.
Read more here.
Following the controversial report from U.S. PIRG, Congress investigates both campus card banking partnerships and financial aid dispersal. Is the future of these products in doubt?
As campuses have embraced electronic distribution of financial aid and banking services tied to student ID cards, a question has emerged. Are students forced to pay more for the convenience? The U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s Education Fund says ‘yes,’ suggesting that college students have been unfairly targeted for extra fees to the financial benefit of both banks and universities.
But vendors serving the higher education community and many campus administrators vehemently deny these allegations. They argue that campus-focused financial products actually save students money and offer significant benefits.
In a June 2012 report entitled “The Campus Debit Card Trap: Are Bank Partnerships Fair to Students?” the U.S. PIRG asserts that university and bank partnerships offering financial products to students are unfair and should be curtailed. The researchers examined both student ID card and bank partnerships as well as student loan disbursements that are tied to a bank account, debit card or reloadable prepaid card.
Officials in Washington have taken note of the report. This summer Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and two other congressmen sent letters to 15 financial institutions and third-party financial providers that supply campus debit and prepaid cards to colleges and universities.
The financial institutions were asked to provide a list of all colleges and universities with which they provide debit or prepaid card services to students. They also requested copies of the individual contracts, a breakdown of debit or prepaid card fees and the terms provided to students at each institution.
According to the release posted on the Web site of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the three legislators “expressed concern about fees” associated with prepaid or debit cards provided to colleges. They called for the contracts to be made public.
Providers making
proactive fee changes
The companies that provide these services have been forced to take notice. Though many have called the report misleading for lumping together very different financial products and the spectrum of providers, some have even begun to announce changes to their financial aid dispersal products.
Heartland Payment Systems eliminated three separate fees from its Acceluraid electronic financial aid disbursement solution–a $30 dispute fee, a $1 bill pay fee, and a 50-cent card-to-card transfer fee.
In a release announcing the fee changes, Ron Farmer, executive director of campus solutions and micropayments for Heartland Payment Systems, acknowledged that campus administrators are feeling the heat about student expenses. “Heartland is helping them and the student,” he said, “by eliminating these fees so both parties have fewer potential expenses to worry about.”
Higher One, the most vilified in the financial aid discussion, has started to make changes too. The company released a statement that it intends to comply with the Pew Charitable Trust guidelines for “Safe Checking in the Electronic Age,” that calls for financial institutions to standardize their disclosure forms.
Another change eliminates the often-criticized fee for PIN-based debit transactions for two of Higher One’s account offerings. The company’s two accounts that assess a monthly fee–Flex at $5.95 per month and Premier at $9.95 per month–do not charge for PIN-based transactions. The free basic OneAcccount continues to include a .50-cent fee for PIN-based transactions made at the point of sale.
It also clarified its over draft protection/non-sufficient fee policies. Higher One does not offer overdraft protection on any accounts. This is a form of credit and Higher One has never issued any lines of credit to customers.
The company does still assess a $29 non-sufficient funds fee if a student writes a check or has a recurring payment set up on an account that doesn’t have the funds available, says a company spokesperson. If a student attempts to make a transaction using the card and the funds are not available they will not be charged the fee, instead the transaction will be declined. The spokesperson told CR80News that other fee changes are on the horizon.
The U.S. PIRG report states that nearly 900 schools with more than nine million students nationwide have partnerships with banks or other financial firms. These include 32 of the 50 largest public four-year universities, 26 of the 50 largest community colleges and six of the 20 largest private not-for-profit schools. In total, these banking partnerships reach 42% of the student population.
Though the U.S. PIRG contends that universities and financial services companies make a lot of money from these partnerships, not all parties agree.
Most financial institutions working with campus card programs describe long-term relationship building with young, soon-to-be professionals as the driver for these programs. Short-term profit windfalls simply don’t exist, according to representatives from several of these institutions.
Wells Fargo has relationships with 40 colleges and universities across the country and views college partnerships as a way to teach new users about financial services products. “[We] are being introduced to students, many looking for their first financial institution. We serve their needs, and hopefully they’ll be lifelong customers and build healthy financial habits,” says Richele J. Messick, spokesperson for Wells Fargo.
Most of Wells Fargo’s university partnerships are connected to student ID card services rather than dedicated exclusively to financial aid delivery.
The U.S. PIRG report states that when student ID services become connected to financial options such as open-loop debit cards, it “may mean that a bank/financial aid firm has taken over the process of issuing IDs at the school.”
Wells Fargo contends that this is not the reality of the relationship and that the banking aspect of a student ID is optional. “The student is the one who has the choice,” says Messick. “You don’t have to link a campus ID to a Wells Fargo account.” When the student opts not to turn on the banking feature of an ID, it still contains all the other campus services, but just doesn’t function as a debit card.
The crux of the U.S. PIRG report focuses on fees related to these types of cards as well as debit cards related to student loan disbursements. The report says that universities are increasingly moving to debit cards as a way to give students their loan money, but by using cards as a form of disbursement, students are at risk of incurring fees.
PIRG sees this as a problem when the dollars in question comes from taxpayer-provided grants and federal loans. U.S. PIRG says this money is designed to go to lower income students who can’t afford the fees tied to these accounts.
The Department of Education allows for federally funded student loans to be disbursed via a payment card but stipulates that this is only acceptable “as long as the issuing bank provides conveniently located fee-free ATMs.” The idea is that students should have free and unfettered access to their aid dollars.
The U.S. PIRG report contends that “convenient” and “fee-free” ATMs still cause problems when lines get too long or cash runs out.
It cites that Higher One has agreements at around 520 schools, but has just 600 ATMs in service. At peak disbursement times, the report claims students queue up in long lines to access their money free of charge, and demand can be greater than the supply of money. This forces some to incur fees of up to $5 because they end up using out-of-network ATMs to get their loan funds.
Since the report was released Higher One announced that more than 700 ATMs are in the field. The company says that if an institution’s Higher One ATM is not operational or is out of cash at any time, it will reimburse OneAccount holders at their request for up to $5 per day for fees charged at other ATMs.
In contrast to the report’s portrayal of students waiting 50 deep in line at a single fee-free ATM on a campus, most providers boast large ATM networks to support student accounts. U.S. Bank has 23,000 ATMs across the country, Wells Fargo has more than 12,000, and both Blackboard and Sallie Mae offer more than 43,000 surcharge-free ATMs via membership in the Allpoint Network.
Blackboard, a long time player in the closed-loop off-campus market with their BbOne offering, launched their financial aid delivery product called BlackboardPay in 2010. The company’s more recent entry to this specific service area gave them a different perspective on financial aid delivery, says Jeff Staples, vice president of market development for Blackboard.
“We committed to deliver a product that best helped students gain access to their Title IV funds,” says Staples. “We looked at the market and asked how we could best serve both the campus and the student … and not at the expense of one over the other.”
Blackboard points to the prepaid platforms from Money Network and Discover as “new tools” they were able to call upon in the creation of the BlackboardPay. These tools provide features they say are not typically found in older debit solutions. According to Staples, BlackboardPay doesn’t charge a PIN debit fee, there is no possibility of overdraft and there are no minimum balance or monthly service fees for active cardholders.
Students can access the funds at no cost in numerous ways:
“Seeking technical compliance with Title IV with a few hundred ATMs isn’t really the same as serving the students’ needs with more than 40,000 ATMs plus ATMs deployed on campus,” Staples says. “We think the campus and students deserve the best offering and fee schedule available, not something that’s simply better than average.”
Compelling students to opt for these branded debit cards is another unfair practice, cites the U.S. PIRG report because it opens up students, “already vulnerable as consumers in this area,” to the risk of incurring extra fees, such as hefty overdraft fees and PIN swipe fees.
This may be a young student’s first experience with a financial institution, and the report says that confusing fee structures for these accounts can cost students a lot of money in “hidden” fees.
Most providers of these services take offense to the concept that fees are hidden. Virtually all providers list fees online and provide documentation of fees at multiple points in the process. Financial accounts, like other services, are not free and have fees associated with them. Even so-called “fee-free” accounts typically have fees for out-of-the-norm activities or improper usage.
“Higher One is not a bank, so cannot speak for those banks named and examined in the study, but Higher One’s offerings do adhere to the fundamental principles discussed by U.S. PIRG in its study, including: 1) providing students with choices, 2) being transparent about how accounts are structured, and 3) enabling colleges and universities to comply with the Department of Education’s standing regulations as they relate to the electronic disbursement of Title IV funds to students,” says Miles Lasater, COO of Higher One in an e-mail statement.
The unfair fees described in the U.S. PIRG’s report are not unlike fees paid by traditional consumers for traditional banking accounts. Virtually all accounts charge for using foreign ATMs and for overdrafting an account. Many banks also charge traditional customers monthly fees for checking accounts. Some banks mitigate those fees for students by offering them accounts with lower fees than the institution’s traditional checking account.
At $3 a month, Wells Fargo’s college checking account is less than its next cheapest account, Value Checking, which costs between $7 and $9 per month. Other checking packages that combine savings and debit can cost $10 to $12 per month. The college account includes many benefits of other checking packages, such as checking, savings, a debit card, online bill pay, mobile banking and text account alerts.
Higher One’s entry-level checking account has no minimum balance requirements and no monthly fees. It doesn’t require a background check. “Many students find this appealing,” says Shoba Lemoine, spokesperson for Higher One.
Higher One OneAccount customers get a Debit MasterCard, which has a 50-cent fee for PIN-based transactions. “We encourage students to choose free signature-based transactions at the point of sale because they are protected with the MasterCard Zero Liability policy against fraudulent purchases and they are more cost-effective for Higher One. So this fee is avoidable and many students never incur it,” says Lemoine.
Still it is this fee that has caused a great deal of the negative attention to the Higher One offering, and some suggest this has led to the harsh view taken by U.S. PIRG and other media outlets on student financial account products in general.
General-purpose reloadable (GPR) cards, commonly called prepaid cards, are a rapidly growing product for campus card and financial aid delivery applications. According to the Federal Reserve, they are also the fastest growing electronic payment method in the U.S. The PIRG report takes a harsh view of these prepaid products citing a lack of government regulation and protections.
Describing the prepaid card industry as unregulated, the report cites “no real consumer protections by federal law” and “no protections to limit your liability.”
To the contrary however, bank-issued prepaid products are often treated with the same protections as other payment offerings. Several issuers of prepaid products mentioned in the report, suggest that painting prepaid cards with such as broad stroke is irresponsible and misleading. According to one provider, “it is true that prepaid industry is not regulated in the same way as credit and debit, but as a bank, all our prepaid users are protected in the same way as other card customers.”
Prepaid debit offers great tools as long as the platform is designed with the consumer in mind, says Blackboard’s Staples. “BlackboardPay accounts are FDIC insured and feature an extremely compelling fee schedule,” he adds. “It is a very consumer-friendly iteration of prepaid debit.”
Without exception, providers interviewed for this article categorized the U.S. PIRG report’s depiction of prepaid as inaccurate and misleading.
A number of parties–service providers, campuses, associations and publications–have both publicly and privately called into question the accuracy of the PIRG report. Perhaps the most frequently heard complaint was that the report seems to lump all student-facing financial services together.
According to a statement issued by the National Association of College and University Business Officers, “the U.S. PIRG report conflates the student aid refund process with debit-linked college and university campus cards.”
In reality, these are very different products. They are marketed differently to students, entered into with different drivers from the institution’s perspective, and priced differently for users.
NACUBO goes on to say the report, “fails to adequately recognize that students have a choice in deciding where and how to manage personal banking and financial transactions and that campus cards are offered for service, convenience and security.”
It is difficult to argue that efforts to contain tuition costs require the streamlining of administrative services. This is the fundamental reason that campuses first began to explore electronic delivery of financial aid. According to NACUBO, “the (PIRG) report misleads readers to believe that campuses profit by providing electronic refunds of student financial aid dollars.”
Most interviewed for this article agreed that cost savings can be achieved via these services. But they stressed that few campuses create new revenue streams.
Sources tell CR80News that these times under the microscope will likely result in stricter guidance from the Department of Education related to dispersal of financial aid dollars. The chance for actual legislation enacted from the Congressional investigation by Durbin and his colleagues is minimal. However, insiders suggest they can pressure the Education Department to act.
Most sources agree that as far as services and fees are concerned campus card banking partnerships have little to hide, and thus little to fear, from the current efforts.
The scrutiny related to the banking partnerships area of the campus financial arena will likely focus on universities receiving up front payments and revenue shares. “Though they may not be unfair, undeserved or even unethical, in the future campuses won’t want to touch them with a ten foot pole,” says one source.
CR80News Editor Zack Martin contributed to this report.
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who are utilizing their unlimited bus ride passes will, starting next week, have to produce their student ID card as well.
The bus rides are paid for by the university’s student fees account and if a non-student is using the pass, he is costing the school money. Drivers will begin requesting student IDs next Monday. If students can’t produce an ID, their bus pass will be confiscated.
Bus drivers will also be confiscating passes that have been deactivated. That could happen if a student was found advertising the pass for sale on one of the online sites, such as Craigslist.
One university official said bus passes are extremely valuable, going for as much as $300. “Students who are selling them above what they pay out of their [student] fees for them are making a profit off of other students’ fees. That’s absolutely unacceptable,” he said.
Read more here.
Access begins, more apps to follow
A little more than six-years ago, Doug Olson, Tulane’s director of card services, found his office flooded under two feet of water. That led to some “belt tightening,” says Olson, as the New Orleans school cancelled its 2005 fall semester so it could recover from a lady named Katrina.
Since then, the school and its 8,338 undergrads, of which 3,600 stay in dorms, have undergone some radical changes and the hurricane is nothing but a bad memory. Everything is back to normal, if anything can ever return to normalcy after a devastating storm. Even with the cancellation of one semester, Tulane didn’t lose a lot of students. In fact, 87% returned for the spring semester.
“We’ve fully recovered,” says Olson of the $600 million in losses suffered by the hurricane.
While the storm probably didn’t lead to a new card program, it certainly helped spur the desire for one. Katrina piqued the school’s interest in contactless, says Jason Tiede, director of financial services for Blackboard Transact, the school’s campus card provider. “When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and wiped out their system, one of the things Tulane did was rebuild the card program,” says Tiede. That’s when Blackboard first introduced FeliCa, Blackboard’s contactless program powered by Sony.
“Tulane wanted to know how to implement the program on campus primarily for security reasons. They’ve been very forward thinking,” says Tiede. Still it took five more years before the contactless system was implemented. And, lest anyone think otherwise, the current card was not named after Katrina. It’s called the Splash card as a play off the school’s nickname, The Green Wave.
Before Splash and even before its predecessor, the Tulane Card, the university used multiple pieces of plastic. “We had an ID card, a copy card, a library card, a meal plan card, everyone had different cards,” says Olson. “We consolidated all the cards in 1993 into the Tulane Card.”
In the early days campus card developer, Harco Industries, provided the system. In 1994 Harco was purchased by AT&T to create AT&T Campuswide. Six years later Blackboard acquired the company and Tulane has remained a Blackboard Transact client.
But it wasn’t until 2010 that Tulane went contactless, the timing dictated by the need to remove Social Security numbers from the IDs.
Eventually, Olson hopes to convert to near field communication to enable a student’s cell phone to meet all the needs that the campus card does now. “I think we’re going to keep growing in that direction,” says Olson. “Are we going to be able to program a phone to be another card on our system? I don’t know.”
Contactless is used in the food court where the card just needs to be waved. The same is true if the student is using the card as part of his meal plan. The card’s magnetic stripe is used for laundry, copying and off campus merchant purchases.
Tulane has three different models of vending readers from Blackboard running on campus. The older two models are magnetic stripe only, but the newest accepts contactless and magnetic stripe payments. “We are considering the option of upgrading all vending readers to the newest contactless vending reader that has a few other perks coming down the road,” adds Olson.
“We’re using contactless to get into basketball games and the freshman residence hall, where everyone has to wave a card at a reader to verify they live there,” explains Olson. “It used to be that 60 people could go through on one wave, but now each person has to wave a card at a reader at the front desk.”
Tulane launched the off campus program with Blackboard’s BbOne solution in 2010 to compliment the on campus discretionary account, Splash, and the upgraded meal plan option, NolaBuck$.
Blackboard has an agreement with the school to promote the off-campus program. “We handle merchant negotiations, equipment and so forth,” says Blackboard’s Tiede.
The merchant pays a transaction fee of between four and eight percent, says Olson. Part of that is retained by Blackboard and the rest goes to Tulane. “We view the off campus program more as a service than a revenue generator,” says Olson. The school has 20 merchants and is processing around $250,000 a semester.
The off-campus program has been bolstered by the decision to allow a portion of the discretionary meal plan funds to be used off campus, says Olson. “If you sign up for a meal plan you can have anything from $25 to $200 earmarked for off campus dining; that helps sell the meal plan because it can be used more places,” says Olson.
The account can be replenished via the Tulane Web site or through kiosks around campus.
One of the card’s primary functions is access control. Initially, the card had a single magnetic stripe with two tracks that handled the meal plan, copy, laundry and vending and off campus. When the school introduced a new dorm security system from Persona Campus Software, it went to a three track magnetic stripe on the card, says Olson.
Persona, owned by security giant Assa Abloy, was introduced at Tulane in the mid-1990s with an offline room lock. “Around 1995, in a newly renovated residence hall, we began testing a variety of alternative card-based security systems and offline locks,” says Olson. Today, Persona technology is used at 350 universities in the U.S.
The Persona solution can handle mag, prox, MIFARE, and iCLASS technologies, says Jim Primovic, regional campus manager for Persona based in New Haven, Conn. The company can also work with the FeliCa contactless technology in the Splash cards.
To get into the main entrance of the residence halls, students use contactless. The front doors of the halls weren’t switched to contactless until the summer of 2011, says Olson. He would love to use contactless to enter dorm rooms but the school doesn’t have the funds to upgrade the 1,300 locks on individual residence room doors.
To enter the dorm room, a student swipes the card’s magnetic stripe and enters a four digit PIN at one of 1,300 stand-alone locks deployed throughout eight residence halls.
The lock system also provides an audit trail. “The Persona system provides a record of when a door has been opened and closed and it even tells us when a door has been left propped open,” says Olson.
Would going contactless on the dorm room doors defeat the extra layer of security that a PIN provides? No says the Persona representative. “We could do it with contactless only or with contactless and a PIN … or it could be a combination of the two, for instance contactless only from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. then contactless and PIN after that time,” Primovic explains.
Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, one of China’s oldest universities, has installed a computing solution based on IBM PureSystems. The school intends to use it to help improve education services offered to students and to launch the university’s Digital Campus platform and student Campus Card.
The new system will provide the backbone for the secure use of the university’s campus card which will be used as an electronic purse by students to pay for expenses on campus, borrow books at the library and enroll for different activities.
“To stay ahead of the ever changing demands of today’s students, who require constant access to the university’s virtual campus, we decided to launch the Digital Campus platform and provide a Campus Card especially tailored to the needs of our student communities,” said Li Longji, director of the school’s Network Center.
The computing IT system provided by IBM helps the university provide cloud-based applications needed to support the Digital Campus services such as authentication, wireless management and connectivity to both the Internet and to the university’s campus network, which will provide students with online access to administration, learning and collaboration processes.
In an effort to offer more protection for its students, the University of Southern California is installing fingerprint scanners at the entrance of all on-campus residence facilities.
Students have until the end of this week to get their fingerprints scanned and a photo taken. Starting next Monday, a student will have to scan his finger and offer up his ID card before entering the dorm.
In addition, guests will have to leave an ID card with building officials in order to obtain a temporary pass.
Some students didn’t think the new system will work. “I don’t understand how it will be any more effective than the current security procedures,” said one student. “A resident can still hold the door for friends and others who do not live in the dormitory, defeating the purpose of the fingerprint scanner.”
Installation of the fingerprint scanners comes a few days after an on-campus shooting on Halloween that left four people injured. None of them were USC students.
Read more here.
School Savings ID, created by a student attending Chapman University, Orange, Calif., could provide students with up to a 20% discount at participating local businesses.
Business major Jason Cunningham started the service early this year to help connect local businesses with the university community. “It’s a win-win for both the businesses who participate…and the students,” he said. “Businesses enlarge their customer base and students can purchase goods and services locally on a student budget.”
It costs businesses $40 to participate. For that, they’re listed on the School ID Savings Web site and promoted through social media, campus flyers and word of mouth.
So far, 20 businesses, from taxi services and dry cleaners to yoga studios and restaurants, have signed up, offering discounts from 10% to 20%.
All students and faculty have to do to claim their discount is present their student ID.
Read more here.
