Students enrolling into Sydney Uni this year will note a new logo adorning their ID cards: that of top-tier bank, ANZ. In an Australian first, Sydney University and ANZ released a joint press release announcing the Student Campus Card, an all-in-one library card, building access card, ID card and Visa reloadable prepaid card.

Director of Campus Card Services, David Carr, is emphatic that the service is not an ANZ Visa Debit Card, or any other bank card. “The card is available on an opt-in basis. We are not pushing students into money they don’t have — something we’ve discussed with the ACCC. We are not even dictating that they be ANZ customers. In fact, the university’s bank is NAB.”

That’s not the opinion of Elly Howse, president of the Student Representative Council at Sydney University, who has been speaking out against the card since its announcement. She claims that students were not properly consulted on the matter, despite a trial run of the card in late 2009. “The SRC was invited to a presentation on the card in late July or early August 2009,” she says, “after which it was assumed we had endorsed it. The project went ahead with a veil of student consultation.”

Howse also has concerns with the implicit pressure the card places on students to spend money on campus — it is free to reload on campus, but attracts a 50c fee off campus, via B-Pay. “A good portion of students are not wealthy, and this card places implicit pressure on students to spend money. Further, I don’t really want a bank to make money off stuff that should be supplied to students in the first place, such as text books.”

Her views are echoed by long-time commentator on the corporatisation of universities, and Monash University academic Dr Simon Cooper. “In the eyes of the university the student is a consumer, rather than citizen,” he says. “The replacement of student unions with user-pays activities, the charging of students for study materials indicates a shift in the ‘student experience’ as almost every aspect of student life is subject to charges and fees. Little wonder the move to ‘invisible’ credit is attractive not merely to the banks but to university administrators as it obscures the financial burden that is now the lot of the contemporary student.”

When questioned on the corporatisation of universities, Carr says they don’t see the deal as a corporate alliance. “We went with ANZ because they were the only ones in Australia with the platform that we needed to ensure that this was a pre-paid card rather than a bank card. We’re merely bringing the latest technology from the marketplace directly to students and giving them the option of participating.”

Rather than receiving money from ANZ, Sydney University’s alleged motive is to move towards a “cash-free campus”. This is said to allow funds, which are currently tied up in cash-collection services, to be used for teaching and learning — a strategy that may start appearing at other universities. A story in The Australian on Monday indicates such a model could be expanded to other institutions — perhaps leading to a technology rush from competing banks for remaining student markets.