Not your father's campus card: campus access cards bear only a passing resemblance to the simple photo IDs of the past. New card technologies can increase security, help target marketing and, sometimes, increase a school's revenue

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, June, 2001 by Tim Goral

Picture this:

John, a junior at State U., approaches the campus health building, draws a card from his wallet and passes it near a door sensor. He hears a beep, and the door clicks open. Inside, he stops at a vending machine, inserts the same card and purchases a soft drink.

John enters the pharmacy and hands the card to the pharmacist who swipes it through a card reader. Her screen shows that John has two refills left on his prescription. She hands him the medication, swipes the card again, and the purchase is instantly billed to the John's account.

On the way to his dorm, John stops at the library and withdraws a book and a video with the same card. Next he uses the card to register his vote in the student government election. Returning to the residence hall, John presents his card to a dorm monitor who slides it into a reader and verifies that John is a student who lives in that building. In awhile, he'll use the card to buy dinner and do his laundry.

It's an extreme example, but this scene plays out daily in varying degrees on campuses around the country. The all-in-one campus card has become such an integral part of daily life for some, that the school is virtually a cash-less society.

Campus access cards have come a long way from the simple photo identification cards of not too long ago. Today's cards feature technologies for identification, building access, vending, library lending, Internet access, meal plans, banking and even medical information.

The first campus-wide, multi-application cards were introduced in 1974. They combined several features such as building access and meal plans on a "mag stripe" that interacted with a central database.

During the next few years cards became more versatile. Cards could access "stored value" applications such as copiers, microfilm readers, printers and vending machines. Bar code cards became the universal system in libraries. Digital photos were added. Proximity or "prox" cards contained a transmitter that opened locks when passed near a sensor. "Smart cards" incorporated a memory chip to store user information.

Now, new "fourth generation" cards take advantage of the Internet for a variety of administrative and user operations. (See chart below.)

Card Tricks

At St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, campus cards fulfill multiple roles, says Pat Gagnon, assistant director of security and safety and manager of access systems.

"First, it's an identification card, then it's a proximity card to get students in and out of the residence halls. The mag stripe is used for food and vending, the ving stripe (sometimes called a junk stripe) is used for laundry machines," he says. "And, finally, there is a bar code on the front of the card for the library."

On a campus of some 2,100 students, accountability is the greatest advantage of a card system. "It protects the environment where faculty, staff and students live and learn and work because we permit only people that belong in the facilities to access them," says Gagnon. "We have many buildings that are open during the day, but none of the residence halls are, so the only people that can go in and out are those with card access."

Because a student's personal information is encoded on the mag stripe, the cards have additional uses besides gaining entry to buildings. Card systems help administrators target promotions to certain portions of the campus population, says Bill Adoff, director of auxiliary services for the Philadelphia Colleges of the Sciences.

"The cards operate on a pass/fail system," he says. "In a res hall, for example, the student hands the card to a dorm monitor who scans it to determine whether he is allowed in that hall or not.

"But we can also develop other pass/fails for the system. We used it at a recent career fair sponsored by Student Affairs. The card reader could track how many students came in and, more important, who attended." The information gleaned can help the school plan future career fairs. A report can then be generated that identifies how many students from a particular major attended the fair.

"We do many promotional items with our tracking," Adoff says. "With the information we track, we can also identify students who have low balances in their meal plans and send them a letter telling them their balance and how to add more money to their accounts."

Perhaps the largest campus card system in use belongs to Brigham Young University, which boasts more than 170,000 card accounts online. The school, which uses the CS Gold system from Diebold, recorded more than 17 million card transactions in 1999, totaling some $26 million. The card can be used nearly anywhere on campus.

The cards lead to more transactions because they are convenient, says Craig Schow, BYU's assistant director for student auxiliary services registry. "After installing card readers on our vending machines, we had to begin restocking some machines twice a day."

The school also uses the cards to boost on-campus food sales. Students used to carry lunches to class rather than going to the cafeteria to use their meal plans, so dining hall managers asked to change the system. Now students can use meal plan money to buy food at one of 16 a la carte dining areas or the 388 reader-equipped vending machines.