Biometrics is now being used to facilitate a range of physical and logical access, secure ID verification for payments and other utilities, and it’s the technology that millions of people now use to unlock their phone each day. But on campus, biometric technology wasn’t always so pervasive, so we’re taking a look back to 2004 and our “Bolt-on biometrics for the college campus” story that discussed ways campuses could get started with the technology.

The University of Nottingham is set to launch a biometric pilot using fingerprint technology to facilitate student registration and attendance at mandatory lectures and exams.

The University of Georgia will be using iris biometrics to enable student access to dining halls and rec center beginning with the coming fall semester. The implementation of iris biometrics comes as part of an initiative that will replace the current hand geometry readers and card swipe access methods.

A host of female students at China’s Beijing Normal University are now able to access their residence hall by simply showing their face after the university installed facial recognition access readers at the dorm’s perimeter doors.

California’s Vista Unified School District has expanded the use of a biometrics system that sees students scan their fingerprints to purchase food at the cafeteria lunch line. The biometrics program has reportedly led to expedited lines and introduced new layers of security for students’ accounts from theft or accidental misuse.

Whether it’s misinformation, concerns over personal data or a general reticence over the implementation of new technology, biometric solutions on campus are still not pervasive. Still, successful university deployments of biometrics for access control, privilege control and authentication have already demonstrated the power of the technology. With this in mind we spoke to ColorID’s biometric specialist, Tim Ortscheid, about campus deployments and discussed security vs. convenience.

Iowa’s Wartburg College spent the month of November trialling biometric access at its dining facility, with a view to test the systems efficiency and potentially implement the system in the near future.