Card, mobile credential, payment and security
Due to student demand, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, revamped its meal plan for the fall semester to include off-campus merchant options. The university inked a partnership with Off-Campus Advantage, a subsidiary of campus card provider The CBORD Group, to roll out its new dining platform known as Frog Pass.
The new meal offering provides flexibility with tiers of meal plans, to-go options for students interning off campus, support for special dietary considerations, and discretionary “Frog Bucks” to be used at participating locations on campus and off.
“We were receiving a great deal of student interest in an off-campus payment program, so we took the opportunity when restructuring the Frog Pass meal plan to add in this capability,” said Craig Allen, TCU’s director of Residential Services. “The change has been very well received by our students and by local merchants we invited to accept the funds, with ten merchants on board at the start of our first semester offering Frog Bucks off campus.”
Taking the ID card off campus at TCU had an impact on merchants’ sales from day one. “Accepting Frog Bucks makes perfect sense for our location, and the response has been fantastic,” said Heather Martinez, general manager of Potbelly Sandwich Works in Fort Worth. “Students really love being able to pay with Frog Bucks. I am seeing a whole new crowd visiting our store.”
“As off-campus programs are becoming more and more popular nationwide, we are seeing student demand as one of the top reasons universities investigate going off campus,” added Shawn McCarthy, vice president of Wide-Area Commerce for The CBORD Group. “Once considered a perk, off-campus payment is becoming a service students expect from their universities, and when student interest is the driving force in a new program, merchants benefit from the effect of its implementation immediately.”
In addition to its partnership with Off-Campus Advantage, TCU is a long-time user of the CS Gold campus card solution from CBORD. The university was therefore able to take advantage of OCA’s central server solution available to users of CS Gold and Odyssey PCS, CBORD’s campus card platforms, providing real-time connections between universities and merchants, as well as eliminating modem banks, phone lines and other hardware on campus.
Clearwater Christian College in Florida has implemented a One Card system from Heartland Campus Solutions that gives the school flexibility to add services as needed.
For now, the card will be good for the library, meals and event tracking. It also includes Heartland’s Give Something Back Network, that enables students and parents to put money on their student IDs and use them to make purchases at Centre Court and select off-campus merchants. Both the student and college receives cash back that goes towards funding student scholarships.
As one administrator put it: “The purpose of the CougarCard is to offer students a greater selection of goods and services, making their transition to CCC easier and more pleasant. The basic idea is that since everyone needs an ID, let’s add value to it to benefit the campus community in as many ways as possible.”
The University of Tulsa in Oklahoma has joined the ranks of colleges allowing their students to use their ID card off-campus at several restaurants.
Previously, Gold Dollars were mainly good for use in laundry machines or at the bookstore. The Gold Dollars Web site enables students–or parents–to add funds to the cards, view menus and locations and even access printable coupons available only to TU One Card members. Commented one student: “It encourages students to venture off campus and enjoy the city of Tulsa rather than staying cooped up in a TU bubble.”
Students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City are slated to get new student ID cards next semester that will retain all features from the current card but will also add “Roo Bucks.” This will allow students to put money on the card that they can use at different university facilities, such as dining, the book store and laundry.
Future plans call for off-campus use. “The fact that everything can basically be done on one card is a big convenience factor, and I think nowadays people really want that convenience of having one thing do everything,” said a university administrator. “This card isn’t going to do everything that they want, but it’s going to add a lot of benefits that they don’t have now.”
Ohio State University has joined the growing list of campuses that have eliminated the Social Security number as a student identifier. In OSU’s case, the SSN has been replaced by an identification number that will be used as the main identifier in student-related data systems.
The new ID system was also created to provide a more comprehensive system for students to view information online. “It’s not just about security,” said one college administrator. “But it will put us in a position to protect.”
Students will not need new BuckIDs to receive their OSU ID numbers. They can simply log on to the school’s BuckID Web site.
While Harvard’s new contactless student ID cards get high marks for the university’s forward thinking, the school’s student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, panned the cards for creating a high frustration level. The reason? It’s hard to find the “sweet spot” on the reader that opens doors.
In addition, it was thought students would be able to open doors without removing the card from their wallets. That has led to “a great deal of pelvic thrusting” to get the card to work, notes this Crimson opinion piece.
Saint James, N.Y.-based IDetect has released a new age verification scanner ideal for use on college campuses. The portable, ruggedized IDetect LITE ID Scanner can also scan driver licenses and corporate IDs.
While it can scan 3D bar codes and magnetic stripe IDs, if the license or ID can’t be scanned, IDetect will take a picture of the license which can help bar owners or liquor store operators avoid fines or license revocations.
Automatically upon an identification scan, the entrant’s picture is taken and saved with entry information. The picture can be used to locate any individual in seconds. IDetect’s exclusive license picture function also takes a picture of an ID that is not able to be scanned.
This feature, coupled with the automatic picture of the entrant, and the IDetect ID scanner’s time and date stamp history feature, is a strong defense and proof of diligence against fines and state authority investigations. IDetect’s License Scanners also flag an ID that is fake, tampered with, shared with another entrant, or banned for any reason, all in less than a second.
IDetect ID Validation Systems have been utilized for more than 15 years in night clubs, universities, casinos, military bases, office buildings, rental car agencies, festivals, banks and liquor stores throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Okanagan College in British Columbia has become the third college in Canada to choose SALTO Systems to provide a contactless electronic access control solution. The first building to roll out the system will be the new $28 million Centre for Learning, a jointly funded project between the provincial government and the college. The facility, which is under construction, will add 22 classrooms to the campus and will be used to provide training for a wide variety of careers.
“The College, which is home to 5,000 students, chose SALTO for its flexibility and the fact that our access control would not have to be hard-wired to every door. Our ANSI stand-alone locks require no wires and are able to communicate with the SALTO software via hotspot wall readers just through normal card use,” says Amir Zouak, vice president of SALTO Systems in Canada.
SALTO will be providing a mix of perimeter and internal locking systems across campus, replacing the majority of mechanical locks in all the existing college buildings and facilities over the next several years.
President Bush signed legislation establishing a federal grant program that provides a new source of financing for colleges and universities to acquire and install electronic physical solutions.
The campus security measure attempts to help colleges develop and implement state-of-the-art emergency systems and campus safety plans. It also requires the Department of Education to develop an emergency disaster plan; create a National Center for Campus Safety at the Department of Justice and establish a disaster relief loan program to help schools recover and rebuild in the event of a disaster.
It also aims to restore integrity and accountability to the student loan programs by requiring institutions and lenders to adopt strict codes of conduct, providing students with full information about their borrowing options when taking out and repaying student loans and protecting students from aggressive marketing practices by lenders.
Read more here.
University of Georgia faculty members need to keep a close track on their season football tickets this year. That’s the warning from one faculty member after he scanned the barcode on the back of the ticket only to discover his nine-digit Social Security number was part of the ID number embedded in the ticket.
University students are assigned their own 16-digit number that doesn’t include the SSN, but that system hasn’t extended to the faculty yet. The faculty member who blew the whistle says a $20 bar code scanner is all that’s needed to read the ticket.
