On a growing number of campuses, student services -- on and off campus -- can be invoked by using campus smart cards. Smart cards store information to authenticate their users and to authorize them to use a large variety of services. Such cards can serve as debit and credit cards for students as well as to regulate students' library privileges, parking, lab access, student health care access, and in many cases can entitle their users to discounts on good and services sold in stores around the campus.

Smart cards or similar cohesive network-based service strategies can be a source of convenience to students and their parents. First, they can eliminate the need for myriad other forms of identification and authorization such as parking permits, library cards, credit cards and so forth. Second, they make it possible to unify the accounting and billing for student activities and to provide a record of the services a student consumes. These tools also support campus efforts to provide for the physical security of students by electronically capturing and recording building entries and exits.

Students and their parents should ask a variety of questions regarding campus electronic service access approaches. Such questions might include:

• what kinds of services are accessible in what fashion?
• how can you and their parents get your money back out of accounts to be accessed via debit cards?
• does the college or university make money on its smart cards?
• are there minimum balances required?
• what kind of security is provided by the card system?