What Happens When a Campus Goes Mobile First?
What Happens When a Campus Goes Mobile First?
The real shift isn’t just from plastic to phone. It’s in operations, communication, staff training, and equity planning.
At first glance, the move to mobile first can seem like a straightforward upgrade. The campus credential shifts from plastic to phone. Students no longer swipe. Card offices print fewer IDs. The process is faster, simpler, and more aligned with the digital expectations of today’s campus communities.
But the institutions that have made the transition know the real story is more complicated.
Going mobile first is not just a technology change. It is a change in service delivery, support expectations, communications strategy, and campus operations. It affects orientation, front-office staffing, user education, policy development, and the way institutions think about access and inclusion. The credential may live on a phone, but the real work of mobile first happens everywhere around it.
Conversations with leaders at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, South Dakota State University, George Washington University, and Sheridan College reveal a clear pattern: mobile first may begin as a card program initiative, but it quickly becomes a campus-wide operational shift.
More Than a Technology Rollout
One of the first lessons campuses learn is that offering mobile credentials is not the same as becoming mobile first.
Many institutions begin by introducing mobile as an option, then move later to make it the default. That gap matters. It gives campuses time to test systems, identify pain points, and understand how the new model affects users and staff.
At UNC - Chapel Hill, mobile credentials soft launched for incoming students in 2023, followed by an official launch in August of that year. The university did not move to mobile first until January 2024. According to Melinda Bakken, Director of Campus Card Services and Person ID, that gap was intentional. The team wanted to make sure all processes were “running smoothly and reliably” before changing the default credential model.
At South Dakota State University, mobile credentials began in January 2020, but mobile first did not arrive until fall 2023. George Washington University launched mobile credentials in March 2025 and moved to mobile first for new summer students just two months later, in May 2025. Sheridan College introduced mobile credentials in 2020/21 as part of a broader digital transformation strategy and has since positioned mobile as the primary credential it issues and supports.
Those timelines may differ, but they point to the same reality: mobile first is not simply a launch date. It is a readiness milestone.
That readiness is not just technical. It is operational, cultural, and institutional. It requires campuses to decide when they are prepared to make mobile the norm rather than the alternative.
The Default Changes Everything
What is mobile first? It’s when mobile becomes the default credential, while physical cards remain available only in limited cases, by request, or as an accommodation.
At UNC - Chapel Hill, mobile credentials are the default for the whole campus, and physical cards are issued only by exception. At George Washington University, all new students receive mobile first unless they do not have an eligible device or have strong opposition. Students who were already enrolled before launch can keep their physical cards, and faculty and staff remain outside the mandate. South Dakota State University requires students to use mobile unless there is a strong reason not to. Sheridan College encourages students toward mobile first while preserving a physical card alternative.
That intentional flexibility matters. The strongest mobile-first programs are not rigid. They set a clear default, but they also make room for exceptions and recognize that adoption may need to happen differently across populations and generations.
Staff Need New Skills
Mobile first does not simply change processes. It changes the skill set required to support them.
Emily Dieker, Director, GWorld Program and Mike Cook, Manager, GWorld Operations and Customer Service at George Washington University offered one of the clearest pieces of advice: “Be ready for the questions your office receives to change. We do way more tech troubleshooting than we ever did pre-mobile. Make sure your staff is trained to handle these questions and comfortable with mobile phones.”
That change is significant. Traditional campus card work often centers on card issuance, eligibility, account support, replacements, and production systems. Mobile first adds an entirely different category of customer service. Staff may help with device settings, NFC compatibility, digital wallets, credential provisioning, operating system behavior, and phone replacement scenarios.
At UNC, new troubleshooting processes had to be created. Bakken described the shift in plain terms:
“We are very much IT for phones now.”
Sheridan College developed support documents and procedures for device changes. SDSU built new processes for enabling mobile in the card system and retiring mobile credential numbers when users leave, an important detail both operationally and financially.
And in many cases, these new demands arrive without staffing adjustments. UNC’s staffing remained unchanged despite the new requirements. GWU kept the same professional staffing levels and even reduced student staffing for a time, though the institution is reconsidering whether that was the right move because some mobile-related tasks, like photo approvals, remain labor-intensive.
Mobile first may create efficiencies, but it does not eliminate work. It reassigns that work to new areas, and those areas require training.
Equity Lives in the Exception Process
No institution represented here has migrated to a truly mobile-only model. Every campus maintains a path to a physical card. That is not a sign that mobile first is incomplete. It is a sign that these institutions understand the realities of access and equity. What do these exceptions look like?
At UNC, exceptions include ADA accommodations, users in biosafety and animal lab environments, guests, and people without NFC-capable devices. At GWU, users with ineligible devices or religious opposition can receive physical cards. Kendell Rohrbach, Director of Card and Parking Services at South Dakota State University, noted they will print a card for anyone who does not have a compatible phone or simply refuses to use mobile. Sheridan College continues to offer physical cards as an alternative and grounds that approach in a straightforward principle: no student should be disadvantaged because of their technology situation.
That principle goes to the heart of what makes a mobile-first program sustainable. Equity cannot be an afterthought. Campuses cannot assume that all users have compatible devices, equal access, the same levels of comfort with technology, or the same personal or professional circumstances.
Equity challenges also extend beyond access to devices. They include digital literacy, accessibility needs, specialized research or workplace environments, and the practical realities of serving guests, affiliates, and long-time members of the campus community.
Melinda Bakken shared one memorable example: an octogenarian retiree came in to renew his card so he could continue using the campus library. When he learned the process now had to be completed on his phone, he was stunned. Staff worked with him and his daughter to get everything set up, and by the time he left, he was excited to be using the new technology.
The story illustrates an important point. Equity in a mobile-first environment is not only about policies on paper. It is about how institutions respond when real people encounter change.
The Benefits Are Real
For all the operational and policy complexity, the campuses interviewed were clear about one thing: mobile first brings meaningful benefits.
UNC saw less card loss. South Dakota State University streamlined orientation and reduced the need for temporary staffing. George Washington University has fewer lines and fewer in-person customers at the semester start and for orientations. Their students “seem to really like it. It’s one less thing they have to keep track of” noted Mike Cook. Sheridan College has reduced physical card production and replacement requests while increasing self-service and speeding up issuance.
Sheridan College also described one of the most transformative benefits of all: students can now receive their credentials before they even arrive on campus, sometimes while the office is closed. A process that once required an in-person visit is now complete before a student ever steps foot on campus.
That small operational change reflects a much larger shift in the student experience. Mobile first can make credentialing less visible, less burdensome, and more integrated into the broader digital journey students already expect.
As Sheridan’s Aesha Brown, Director – Campus Services put it,
“Mobile first isn’t about replacing a plastic card. It’s about meeting students where they are and delivering a campus experience that reflects how they already live, learn, and connect.”
The Work Beyond the Credential
For the campus card community, perhaps the biggest lesson is this: the most important decisions in a mobile first transition are often the ones made outside the technology itself.
Success depends on leadership support, clear policies, cross-campus stakeholder alignment, practical exception handling, strong communication, and staff training that reflects a different kind of front-line work. It depends on understanding where the credential is used, who still needs alternatives, and how the user experience changes when self-service begins before arrival.
Campuses that succeed in going mobile first are not simply the ones that deploy the technology. They are the ones that prepare the institution for everything that comes with it.
The move from plastic to phone may be visible. But the real transformation happens behind the scenes in the systems, people, and practices that support it.
Special thanks to our contributors for this post:
- Melinda Bakken, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Aesha Brown, Sheridan College
- Mike Cook, George Washington University
- Emily Dieker, George Washington University
- Kendell Rohrbach, South Dakota State University