Card, mobile credential, payment and security
With more campuses now testing the waters with mobile credentials, the buzz has circulated across the campus card industry and its professionals. But students have also taken notice of the new credential technology and seem eager to get their hands on it.
An editorial published in the University of Texas at Austin's student publication late last year called for the university to implement some form of mobile ID. Now, a second Daily Texan editorial has been penned, again calling for the university to issue some form of digital credential to UT students.
The editorial, in part, rationalizes the deployment of mobile IDs because "almost everyone has either lost their own ID card at some point or knows someone else who has." Echoing the same message that has been core to mobile credentials thus far. This reinforces the message that students will forget a wallet or plastic ID card, but are far lass likely to forget their phone. Moreover, the phone can be more easily tracked if lost.
“They [mobile IDs] are convenient for students and they also have operational benefits for the university,” said Prabhudev Konana, associate dean for instructional innovation at UT Austin in a Daily Texan interview.
The author also posits that with digital IDs students could "avoid waiting in long lines to upgrade their UT IDs at orientation and quickly make any updates to their information."
Some at the university are so keen to have mobile IDs that the author even suggests turning to undergraduate students themselves to develop the technology and infrastructure. “Technology is so advanced today that undergraduates themselves could come up with the digital interface needed for mobile student IDs,” added Konana.
While this isn't a viable way forward, it does show that students are paying attention to the credential technology available to them, and reinforces demand among students for more aspects of campus life to go mobile.
