Managing international student identities is complex, involving fragmented systems for university access, digital tools, housing, and discounts. Initiatives like the European Student Card (ESC) and EU Digital Identity Wallet aim to consolidate student credentials but face interoperability challenges.
Digital wallets could unify student identities by securely storing and managing credentials tied to a persistent legal identity, enhancing data sharing while ensuring privacy. Building a unified ecosystem requires standardizing credential formats and data, with coordination among universities, student card providers, and technology standards bodies to drive effective development.
TL;DR
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Current Challenges in Student Identity: Managing international student identities involves complex needs like university access, digital tools, housing, and discounts, which are currently fragmented across local systems and national aggregators.
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Fragmented Initiatives: Efforts like the European Student Card (ESC) and EU Digital Identity Wallet aim to consolidate student status and credentials but face challenges of interoperability and data complexity.
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Role of Digital Wallets: Digital wallets are seen as pivotal in unifying student identities by securely storing and managing credentials tied to a persistent legal identity. They enable easier data sharing while ensuring integrity and privacy.
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Building a Unified Ecosystem: Standardizing credential formats and data inclusion is crucial for advancing a global digital student identity. Coordination among universities, student card providers, and technology standards bodies is essential to drive these developments effectively.
The need for an international digital student identity
The typical identity needs of a student are multifaceted and complex, and being an international student makes it even more complicated. Students need to verify their identity, and the veracity of their credentials, when applying for university.
When managing applications, which in the first instance is done remote, a student status is created once the student accepts admission. This status then needs to be translated into access credentials at the actual university, covering both physical access management and access to digital tools and resources.
Access credentials are also needed to access venues and resources that are not necessarily part of the university campus, but are necessary for a functioning university experience, e.g. housing, student association resources, venues etc. And finally, student status typically gives discounts, privileged access etc for various services, including travel, gym memberships, bookstores etc.
For international students, the complexity increases further since universities cannot rely on national credentials systems, databases and registries. Also, proving and managing legal identity becomes especially important, since students typically qualify for special immigration processes and visas. Today, traveling on student status with the intent of e.g. working rather than studying is a commonly used method for illegal immigration.
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Student identities are managed locally
However, we are far from an international digital student identity. Today, in most EU countries, management of student identity status is done on university / institution level (although structured cooperation between universities also exists, e.g. the LADOK system in Sweden). Physical access is typically handled locally. Discount systems are managed by aggregators, most of them national, even though there are some international (e.g. the International Student Identity Card, ISIC).
Fragments of digital international student identities
There are some initiatives to create and manage a system for international student statuses. On EU level, the European Student Card (ESC) initiative has been running since 2016, and today works as a QR code and hologram that can be put on physical cards and is used to prove student status, but not student identity.
Furthermore, the EU Digital Identity Wallet initiative is looking at creating EU-wide digital student status identity credentials, as well as other credentials tied to the student, e.g. course results. Also, physical access management is going digital, and plastic access cards are being replaced by digital credentials, typically for mobile device storage and use.
Identity wallets: Forging International Student IDs
Given the complexity of the different use cases, the complexity of data and access rights tied to a specific student’s status, the complexity of proving credentials and the multitude of different actors, with different objectives and resources, it is clear that the ecosystem will continue to be very fragmented, possibly for quite a long time.
Currently, a lot of focus is put on the potential of using digital wallets to make progress in this fragmented ecosystem. They can make data collection, storage and sharing easier. How would this work then? To begin with, a good bet is that any persistent student identity should be tied to a persistent legal identity, in order to ensure a stable system that works across time and across many different actors in the ecosystem.
It therefore makes sense to start building a student identity with a sound proof of legal identity, e.g. via a ePassport or a National Identity Card equipped with an NFC-readable chip to protect against identity fraud, or a future digital identity credential, e.g. a Mobile Driving License.
Once this is done, any actor should try to tie credentials in the system to this identity, i.e. the credentials should contain identity information that allows a 1-1 match with the persistent identity that the student stores in his / her wallet. There are obvious integrity risks with this, which also means that the credentials should be structured in a way that allows the student to build new credentials with less data for sharing for low-assurance use cases, e.g. to get access to a student-only bar or a discount at a coffee shop.
A student cannot be expected to have the skills to build these types of credentials themselves, so a wallet needs to have the functionality inbuilt for different standard datasets, built on the principle of data minimization.
Developing an Ecosystem for Global Digital Student Identity
The next step is to ensure that enough effort is put on building standards for credentials, including standards on which data to include, data formats etc. Managing legal identity and student status tied to a specific university in a shared data format and with student-held wallets is a starting point, but does not create a lot of added value beyond the existing fragmented system.
The final question is who should drive these developments? The individual universities have limited incentives to do this, and are not ideally placed in the ecosystem for driving technology standards, but could be important contributors when it comes to data standards for e.g. course result credentials. Student card providers, who today typically focus on student discounts and similar, probably have a better position.
They already interact with most important actors in the ecosystem and they provide clear and recurring value for students, e.g. for access, discounts etc. This would mean that they need to move beyond managing a student status card towards being the node of a wallet-centric ecosystem. A grand ambition, but with very clear benefits for all stakeholders.