Modern colleges and universities are becoming increasingly streamlined – that is, they are grouping the accompanying experiences into a more cohesive package – and ID cards are to thank. Colleges these days don’t rely solely on tuition to make their money, instead capitalizing on all of the surrounding needs and wants of students, including transportation, food, leisure and health. It’s not uncommon for a college or university to have what is called mandatory non-tuition fees, services that students pay towards that aren’t strictly curricular in nature.
This makes the entire college experience better. Having everything contained and convenient allows students to focus on their studies, and bridges that potentially uneasy transition from parents’ home to the big wide world. That means they can hit the campus cafeteria when they’re hungry, hit the campus gym when they think they’ve eaten too much, go to the campus library to study and even take buses from a central campus bus stop. That should be too many balls for college administration to juggle, but with ID card systems, like the ones we offer at Avon Security Products the entire process is streamlined.
Student ID cards also have the potential to be “topped up”, to have money added to them for non-basic goods and services like snacks or non-cafeteria food. In this way, they can function like a campus-wide credit card, further streamlining services and saving students from having to juggle a number of different cards. When they want to want to go to the gym, they bring the same card as they would need to grab a snack afterwards.
Because the card is controlled centrally by the university, in the event that it goes missing, the student doesn’t have to spend countless hours on the phone with different institutions asking for a new card – no jumping through bureaucratic hoops at the bank, or calling up the transit commission to order a new bus pass. It’s simply dealt with at the school. This is another reason ID cards continue to gain popularity at colleges, and why, increasingly, institutions are looking to us at Avon Security Products for state of the art ID card printers and systems: it makes everything much more streamlined and manageable.
Finally, an ID card also offers safety. Campuses can be easy targets for criminal activity – they keep fairly open borders and generally pride themselves on inclusiveness. This is good, but in order to keep everyone safe, it’s beneficial to know who belongs on campus and who doesn’t, and having students present ID cards is a quick and effective way of obtaining that information. Also, ID card entrance is key to curbing theft, especially on residences, which sees an flux of people that would otherwise be too great to keep track of.
College can be difficult enough to navigate, without juggling eight separate accounts, each with their own unique methods of payment and each with a different card. A student’s wallet alone would be enough to weigh them down! Because of the sophisticated data technology native to every single ID card, campus life can remain free of unnecessary complication. If you want to streamline your business, drop us a line here at R&P Prints – we’re more than happy to help!