Could a student ID card printer make your life easier?

Schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK – and beyond – are steeling themselves for student enrolment season. This early part of the academic year is crucial to ensure a seamless and efficient education process, but it can be very hectic indeed, particularly for institutions that have hundreds or even thousands of students to process at once.

In this post we’ll clarify why high-quality student ID is important, and how an education ID card printer can take away some of the stress. 

Today’s student ID card is much more than simply a means of proving identification. With technology increasingly at the heart of daily experiences, the student ID card has acquired many applications spanning various aspects of a student’s life, and that of the educational establishment they attend. 

Now, the ID cards issued during student enrolment can be used to record attendance at lectures; pay for items in the canteen or from vending machines; gain access to access-controlled buildings and facilities; borrow books and resources; secure reduced prices for transport, goods and services, along with a whole host of other possibilities and opportunities both within and outside education. 

For the schools and colleges involved, ID cards help to track individuals and assets; link educational outcomes and other administrative information to the student’s record; restrict access to buildings and facilities (improving the safety of students, staff and property); ensure that all students can be correctly identified and provide a robust audit trail. 

Much of this is possible because educational ID cards can now incorporate a barcode, RFID tag and/or biometrics, as well as a host of other data. These are the gold standard in terms of identification, privacy, data protection and access control, and they greatly enhance the opportunities for schools, colleges and students to streamline and automate otherwise tedious tasks while improving accuracy and record-keeping. 

However, it also means that issuing correct, usable and durable student ID is more important than ever, and the process of student enrolment can be incredibly time-consuming and demanding.

The right education ID card printer can streamline student enrolment

While many organisations have automated or streamlined the process of gathering the information required for ID cards (for example, via online registration), the challenge of linking that data to the card, and printing that card at student enrolment, often requires manual processes and lots of time. 

These processes can be outsourced, but this throws up issues around data protection and can be expensive. With third-party providers there is also likely to be a delay between the submission of the student’s information and physical delivery of the card, which can be highly inconvenient; for example, if a card has been damaged or lost mid-term, and the student needs a replacement immediately.

Many colleges and schools are investing in their own, on-site, student ID card printer. This can save time and money, especially where large volumes are printed, but the need to choose the right printer for the cards involved is often overlooked. For example, it is important to find out before purchasing:

• Whether the education ID printer is capable of printing dual-sided cards,
  

• Whether it permits the use of high-level security card encoding, 
  

• How reliable the printer is, 
  

• Whether consumables (blank cards, printer ribbon) will greatly increase the overall cost, and
  

• The speed at which the printer can generate complete ID cards.

For example, our student enrolment bundles include both a high quality education ID printer and blank cards and ribbon, so they are ready to use out of the box. One bundle includes the Magicard 300, which is an excellent student ID card printer ideal for student enrolment runs of up to 10,000 cards per year. The other bundle is ideal for organisations that print cards in even larger volumes and features the highly respected Evolis Primacy 2 printer.

Being able to accurately identify individuals (and to prove one’s own identity) is increasingly part of daily life, and this is particularly so in education. However, there is no longer any need for student enrolment to be a relentless manual process. If you’d like to know more about a student ID card printer, please get in touch with us to discuss the options.