I've now handed in a perfectly good identity card and received another one which as far as I am concerned has exactly the same functionality, though there are some minor changes to the appearance which are of no consequence since I never show the card to anything but a card-reader slot.

Even if I had to show it to a human, nothing of significance that is relevant to its function as an identity card has changed.

Does anyone know how much it has cost to replace all these cards, or why anyone even thought it necessary?

Should we report this waste of tax-payers money to government ministers and the press?

After all, the money comes out of income given to the university to do teaching and research.

More on the background to this. and also the spurious justifications given for the exercise by people responsible for it -- who seem to understand little about what a university is, however well-meaning and hard-working they may be.

This is what comes of academics delegating far too much responsbility to adminstrators and other non-academic decision-makers who don't have to work at the coal-face of extending and promulgating knowledge, and have little or no experience of the diversity of functions, responsibilities and commitments of academics -- even if some of them have university degrees.

Comment by one respondent:

The change, I have noticed, is that BU is now a BIG university in the
new card, not a SMALL university as in the old one.