Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Just 16% of K-12 schools actually badge students and staff, according to a recently-released nationwide survey of the American Association of School Administrators. More significantly, there is a surprising difference in this rate among regions of the country.
While 16% of respondents said staff and students are badged, another 35% reported that staff only are badged. Some 20% say badges exist but aren’t enforced and 28% don’t use badges at all. Just 4% of the western states, such as California and Washington, reported badging students and staff. Compare that to a high of nearly 26% of respondents in the northeast, such as New York and Connecticut. Additionally, about 45% of responders from the western states say badges aren’t used at all.
However, more than 85% of respondents require all visitors to sign in and receive a badge.
What’s not so surprising is that nearly 80% of administrators responding to the survey describe their funding level as “stretched” or “inadequate.” One of the study’s findings points out that this lack of funding could be directly tied to the fact that not a single respondent reported all doors can be locked down electronically in the event of an emergency, which “represents a potentially problematic situation.”
The study did offer some recommendations regarding building access:
The survey was conducted last year by AASA, security provider Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies and security consultant RETA Security on the status of safety and security in America’s K-12 public schools.
U.S. Bank is piloting with its employees in Minneapolis a new product that enables cardholders to use a single card for traditional magnetic stripe purchases, Visa payWave transactions and to gain access to secure facilities.
Those involved in the pilot can make purchases and enter their secure work location using a U.S. Bank AccelaPay Visa Card, a prepaid payroll account. The cards contain the MicroPass 4006 platform from INSIDE Contactless which powers both the Visa payWave and the HID iCLASS applications on the card. HID also provided the access control readers for the pilot.
The use of one card for identification, payments and secure access could be a viable alternative in several industries, including government, university, corporate, health care and transportation. Universities, for example, would be able to offer faculty and students secure access to university buildings such as dormitories and laboratories, while also using the same card as an ID and for purchases. The card will also have the ability to combine workplace IDs and security access cards with payment cards providing only one card to employees instead of two.
CPI Card Group, a financial and commercial card production company, managed the production of the cards for this pilot.
Many U.S. school and government leaders used notification technology, such as that provided by Blackboard Connect, to proactively reach parents and residents with important updates and information about Swine flu. It’s the latest example of the way that time-sensitive communication has advanced far beyond the days when it might have taken officials days to reach all of their constituents with little or no way to confirm that the were received.
In just eight days, from April 27 to May 4, education technology company Blackboard says its Connect platform sent some 9.79 million messages direct to users in support of school and government Swine Flu outreach efforts.
Approximately 40% of the messages dealt with the flu outbreak and helped officials quickly reach parents, staff and residents. Officials communicated a wide range of information through email, voice mail and text messages, including updates on potential cases and precautionary measures being taken to help control the spread of disease and eliminate undue panic in communities.
For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District used Blackboard Connect on April 27, within the first hours of public concern over the flu, sent reassuring messages, in English and Spanish, to 713,000 unique recipients.
Drawing on the experience gained in delivering hundreds of millions of messages for nearly 2,500 K-12 organizations, college campuses and cities nationwide, the Blackboard Connect platform allows officials to send an unlimited number of messages, requires no additional hardware, and can be used from any computer with Internet access or telephone. This ensures that administrators can send vital messages from wherever they are located–even if they are evacuated.
The CBORD Group, the Ithaca, N.Y. provider of food and nutrition management solutions, cashless card systems, and security solutions for colleges, universities and health care facilities, rolled out the newest version of its unattended cash-to-account station that gives cardholders the ability to view current account balances and deposit cash directly into their accounts.
The ValuePort III, which replaces several predecessors, including the original ValuePort, ValuePort II and CS Value Terminal, is a 24-hour cash-to-account station providing additional convenience for cardholders to view account balances, deposit cash, and dispense guest cards. An integrated receipt printer provides cardholders with a record of their transactions.
“We have been using the ValuePort III for several months, and we’re very happy with it,” said Dolores Harper, director of University ID at Texas Tech University. “Our students haven’t had any issues using it. In fact, after just a few months we are averaging several hundred dollars in deposits every couple of days. I like the reporting: when you take the money out, the report provides the bill count by denomination and displays a grand total. The configuration of IP addresses and the like is simple, and I like having our school color on the front.”
The University of Maryland in Baltimore, is considering integrating its student ID cards with SmarTrip cards, a contactless stored-value smart card used for payment within the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Under the proposed program, instead of printing new student IDs on regular plain ID cards, the University would use blank SmarTrip cards, encouraging students to ride the Metro while removing the necessary step of buying a SmarTrip or dealing with paper fare cards.
According to one proponent of the plan, it would strengthen the bonds between the university and the rest of the region and also aid in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the hot markets to grow ID card printing sales is in higher education, suggests this article form Business Solutions. Mark Doi, director of end user sales for the education market at HID Global, says universities offer a huge growth market for ID card sales. It’s a market that includes some 4,100 four-year colleges and universities and two-year technical and community colleges totaling about 17.5 million students and 3.4 million faculty members in the U.S. alone. That’s expected to grow to 20 million by 2015, says Doi.
Geared towards value added resellers, the article also points out that these resellers should tie as many applications as possible into their card solutions.
“In addition to serving as a visual means of identification, a student ID can also act as a dorm key, a library checkout card, a parking pass, a bookstore discount card, a cash card, a laundry token, and a secure logon to computer networks,” says Doi. “When multiple stakeholders in the university can all see value in the purchase of a new ID card system, it becomes a much easier investment to justify.”
Read more here.
The credit card reform bill, which passed the Senate and is expected to clear the House by the end of the week, could have serious implications for students and consumers under age 21, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor. While the bill offers young consumers special protections, those may come at a price: less access to credit, especially for students.
Half of today’s college students have four or more cards and are carrying an average balance of $3,173 – a record, according to the most recent survey on credit-card usage by student-loan giant Sallie Mae.
The bill limits the credit that can be extended to full-time college students between the ages of 18 and 21 to either $500 or 20% of the student’s gross income. It also limits pre-approved offers of credit to young consumers and prohibits increases in the credit limit unless someone who is jointly liable approves the increase in writing.
Read more here.
Despite a weakened economy Higher One, a financial services provider focused on higher education, has seen record growth in 2009. The New Haven, Conn. company, which specializes in issuing financial aid refunds electronically saving institutions the cost of issuing a paper check, has added a record 88 colleges and universities in just the first four months of this year.
Since signing its first client in 2002, Higher One now represents more than 300 higher education institutions, distributing refunds to more than two million students. The company was recently ranked No. 79 on the 2009 Fast 500 list of the 500 Fastest Growing Technology Companies in the United States.
“Higher One’s value proposition is extremely appealing to institutions of higher education right now, given the funding hardships many colleges and universities currently face,” said President and CEO Dean Hatton. In seven years, the company has eliminated four million paper checks while distributing more than $7.6 billion to students.
Higher One, a New Haven, Conn. financial services and payment company focused on higher education, has partnered with Finger Lakes Community College, Canandaigua, N.Y., to distribute financial aid disbursements to students beginning in September. Prior to this new agreement, the college relied on paper checks that were mailed to each qualifying student.
“After comparing our process of cutting and mailing checks with Higher One’s process of electronic methods, it was determined it was to our benefit to let Higher One distribute refunds to our students,” said Joe Delforte, Finger Lakes controller.
Students will be mailed a co-branded card along with instructions on how to log onto Higher One’s Web site to access their account and verify their email and primary mailing addresses. From this point, the student then has the option to select how he prefers his refund disbursement to be made. These options include two electronic options: direct deposit to the OneAccount, a no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account provided by Higher One, and an ACH transfer to a bank account of the student’s choice.
In addition, FLCC is also providing students with the option of receiving their refunds via paper check.
The college is one of 11 schools in New York that has partnered with Higher One for refund distributions.
Social Security numbers rarely fade away, even after they’re no longer being used as employee or student identifiers. That’s what the University of Washington learned when a computer hack put the names and Social Security numbers of more than 6,000 university staff, faculty and retirees at risk. The school had quit using the numbers seven years ago.
Yet, the SSNs were still housed on one server at the university’s Transportation Services and it was that computer that was hacked. While the breach occurred last December, those affected weren’t notified until last month. The reason? A university official described the hacked server as a “one-of-a-kind system” that made it difficult to identify exactly what information was affected.
