As some of you know, I’ve returned to school to complete an MBA and this week I went to my orientation for new students.   While it was mainly a boring orientation, I did notice some interesting changes to the university processes since the last time I was in college many many years ago.

First, the university has sold out to banks as the new student ID is now nothing more than a bank debit card.  I was perplexed by this at first because I thought the card was a simple vehicle to distribute funds but the card itself is THE student ID to be used throughout the school.  I found it odd and ironic that your identity (as defined by the university) is a debit card that houses your financial aid.

Although students have a few options for their financial aid packages there was a hard push to get your financial aid refunds (loans, grants, etc) put in an account linked to your card.   I chose to have my financial aid ACH’d to my personal bank accounts and rolled my eyes at the audacity of the university selling out to banks.

I’m doing the math in my head and I’m thinking: 2,000,000 students x $30,000 (avg financial aid) = $60 billion in cash.   I guess this is one way to recapitalize banks, take student’s financial aid, keep it tethered to a debit card, and through the magic of fractional reserve banking, lend out the rest to make money!

Secondly, while there were supplemental health insurance plans back in my day, there was a hard push and sales pitch to sell health insurance policies to students.   Ironically, there were so many disclaimers and warnings about limitations that the policy looked pretty worthless and sadly international students are REQUIRED to buy the policy!

Lastly, the staff doing the orientation kept referring to “FREE” things like “Free libraries”, “Free Tutoring”, “Free Internet Wifi”, and a variety of other “free” services but I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut and asked that if they were truly “free” when a few surprised academics finally relented and said “you’ve already paid for these services through the student use fees”  and that seemed to make it sound just a bit less valuable.