Assurance

["Joe St Sauver" <>]

Ann commented:

#Given the difficulty of motivating the administration to take up 
#the mantle of and pay for id proofing in the context of identity 
#assurance, could this driver assist? 

I believe residency/domicilary status largely drives institutional
interest in identity assurance, at least at state schools. After all, 
student residency/domicilary status determines eligibility for 
in-state tuition rates, right?

In most states, for most purposes, physical presence plus intent
(as manifested by objective documents/evidence), determines residency 
(but I'm not an attorney and this isn't legal advice).

For example, a person who moves from one state to another, rents an
apartment, gets a local job and says, "I consider Alphaville to now be
my home" will normally be presumed to be a resident of Alphaville (and
the state in which Alphaville exists). As such, they will need to get 
a new driver's license and register/title their car in their new home 
state, usually within a month or so, and update their voter's registration,
etc.

But now come back to the question of in-state vs. out-of-state tuition
eligibility. In many states, you may not be able to obtain in-state
tuition if you move to a state "primarily for the purpose of going 
to school."

When that's true, imagine the following terrific "Catch-22:"

-- you've moved, and have already changed your driver's license and car
   registration, and you really live in the state, but your local school
   won't recognize that you're "really" an in-state person

-- because you've declared your intention to be a resident of the new
   state, and you've taken tangible steps (like changing your driver's
   license), you are no longer a resident of your old state (and thus,
   among other things, you can't get financial aid from them)

You end up a "man (or woman) without a state," a theoretical impossibility,
but a common reality. It happened to me when I was going to school, in
fact. (Short form: used to live in St Paul, MN, but after I left for school
in NY state, my widowed mom, sick of the snow, packed up and moved to 
Hawaii. I was no longer a Minnesotan, but couldn't become a New Yorker 
(I was there "primarily for school"), and couldn't be a Hawaiian (due 
to school and the timing of her move, I'd never had a chance to go to my 
Mom's new home there, and I'm not sure her efficiency would have been a 
good fit for more than just her, anyhow).

Many students, recognizing this reality, don't even try to change their 
residency, but continue to use their home state driver's license for 
four (or more!) years while at school.

But think about all the problems that causes:

-- assume a student's parents move to some third party state (like my
   example), where's the student's home address then?

-- the out-of-state student may be called for jury duty by their 
   "home" state

-- voting becomes complicated (absentee ballots can be a real pain),
   see for example 
   
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/03/gop-backed-voter-fraud-laws-aim-to-disenfranchise-students.html

-- things like local hunting and fishing licenses are unnecessarily
   expensive, if a student is sportsman or sportswoman

-- local police may hassle someone for failing to change their driver's
   license and vehicle registration after a month or so (remember that
   some states have real property tax plans, and when you register your
   vehicle locally, you may be taxed on its value)

If you "buy" the argument that residency drives institutional interest
in identity, you then need to recognize the other reality: namely, the
presumption is typically that you're NOT a resident, unless you are able
to convincingly prove otherwise. Treating this issue scientifically/
systematically, and thereby allowing more people to become resident, 
may or may not be congruent with some institutions' financial objectives.

All of the above is not to say that there aren't others in higher education
who are keenly interested in identity assurance, because there are many 
who are. For example:

-- Card offices (pragmatically, what gets adopted for identity proofing
   directly determines how easy (or hard) a time their workload will be)

-- Human Resources (hiring a new staff member or faculty person, you really
   would like to do due dilligence on their background, at least if they're
   going to be hired for a sensitive role)

-- Admissions Office folks charged with assessing and accepting credentials
   from other institutions (how do I know that the credits from John Joseph
   Anderson from Foobar U are really credits that "belong" to "our" incoming
   John Joseph Anderson?), and often the source of initial credentials
   (used to submit application materials) that eventually morph into student
   email accounts

-- Office of International Students (saddled with SEVIS-related regulations
   and paperwork)

-- Office of Testing and Assessment (handling standardized testing, both
   for admission and placement, but also things relating to professional
   credentialing as students graduate)

-- Distance education also can pose a real challenge...

-- Heck, even instructors teaching large introductory classes face an 
   interesting challenge: how do you know that the person who's turning
   in a mid term or final is really the person who's name is on that exam?
   Most schools do not require students to present an ID card or to put
   their fingerprint on their blue book or answer sheet when they turn it 
   in...

-- Information technology offices (they need to issue online credentials,
   and reset them when required)

-- Campus lock shops (still a LOT of keys on most campuses)

So, bottom line, I think identity assurance matters to a lot more folks in
higher education than we might think, although clearly the financial aid
folks are a major driver, you're right.

Regards,

Joe