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Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) chip cards were meant to make transactions more secure, but Texas IT consultant and forensic investigator Colman Ryan has pointed out that after three failed attempts to read a chip, a terminal will allow the card to be swiped. A criminal presenting a cloned credit card embedded with a fake chip will still have the stolen account information stored on the card’s magnetic strip. If the point-of-sale terminal can’t read the chip after three tries, a fallback feature will ask the user to swipe the card instead. That fallback feature cannot be switched off. The EMV chip is designed to protect the retailer against fraudulent charges by verifying the card was physically present during the transaction. But if the chip isn’t read, the merchant—not the bank—will be on the hook for any fraud.

A greater emphasis on measuring educational outcomes, coupled with new efforts to modernize college classrooms, is likely to drive technology adoption on campuses in the next couple of years, according to the NMC Horizon Report, 2018 Higher Education Edition. The report was recently released by Educause, which has taken over the project from the now-defunct New Media Consortium. The report looks at key trends, challenges, and developments facing technology adoption in higher ed. The types of technologies most likely to be adopted include analytics that can help institutions track at-risk students and customize the learning experience. Makerspaces for activities such as 3-D printing and virtual reality are also on the rise, as these functions become more mainstream in the work world. Adaptive learning technologies and artificial intelligence may require another two to three years before they have much impact on colleges and universities. Technologies such as robotics and mixed reality ...

With more than 6,000 first-year students expected to arrive soon for the fall term, Florida State University, Tallahassee, is deploying a new online tool to assist them in reducing stress and adjusting to the campus. Called the Student Resilience Project, it was developed by the Institute for Family Violence Studies at the school’s College of Social Work. As part of the project, all incoming freshmen and transfer students receive mandatory training through animations, TED Talk-style audio presentations by faculty members and mental-health providers, and videos of current FSU students recounting their own first-year issues and how they dealt with them. The project website also offers audios for mindful meditation and music therapy, along with journaling tips and connections to university and community trauma resources. Recognizing that the transition to higher ed and new surroundings can be very stressful for some students, the project’s aim is to guide new arrivals in building on their...

Complications appear to be bogging down the “free college” movement, particularly in New York. An August report from the Center for an Urban Future found that just 3.2% of the undergraduates statewide received an Excelsior Scholarship . The program requires students to earn at least 30 credits every year of enrollment, which proved to be the main reason students applying for the funds were rejected. According to the report, 43,513 of the 63,599 scholarship applications in 2018 were rejected, with more than 36,000 denied because of insufficient credits. “Admittedly, it’s still early days for the program, so the numbers may drift upwards a bit,” Matt Reed, vice president for learning, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, NJ, wrote in his Confessions of a Community College Dean column for Inside Higher Ed. “But with complicated paperwork requirements, an extraordinarily high credit requirement, and a postgraduation residency requirement in place, it’s not surprising that the impact h...

A new Ithaka S+R research project aims to determine whether campus libraries could do more to help community-college students complete their studies. The first phase of the project discovered that libraries and students aren’t always on the same page. For libraries, “student success” often has been defined by measurable academic data, such as the number of students who attain degrees or certificates, according to EdSurge’s account of the project. On the other hand, researchers found students viewed success in school in terms of personal satisfaction with their work and their lives—a much more nebulous goal. However, when students were asked about ongoing challenges, their answers provided some insights into how libraries could lend a hand to help them. Many students reported that applying for financial aid was confusing and they were having trouble paying for normal living expenses. Quite a few students were working parents who said they struggled to find affordable care for their kid...

Last week, when Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat reported their latest quarterly earnings, all three social platforms noted a slowdown or drop in users. Facebook’s user numbers remained flat in North America and fell in Europe on a quarter-over-quarter basis, Twitter reported a slight downturn in monthly users, and Snap posted a decline in daily active users for the second quarter. CNBC floated the possibility that social-media growth has peaked, with no room to add significant numbers of new users—at least in the West. Facebook still hopes to use “lite” versions of its apps to secure gains in huge, virtually untapped markets such as India and Indonesia. And, of course, China, with its billions of potential users, remains closed for now to Facebook and other popular platforms. Facebook and Twitter both blamed the European Union’s new data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, as a factor in their declines. However, Facebook’s monthly page visits have been falling sharply...