I have recently started university and am required to use an app that has three Facebook trackers, one of them being a Facebook location tracker according to Exodus App Privacy, for the dining plan, when it would literally work perfectly fine using your student ID and ordering to a real cashier, LIKE HOW IT HAS BEEN DONE FOR DECADES.
I have also read many stories of people that live in apartments that require them to use a mobile app for god damn LAUNDRY. All you need, is a card reader, and it will work perfectly fine like it has been for the longest time.
Privacy concerns aside, it is just annoying that you need this app and that app and this app and that app and it just clutters space on your phone. Security concerns too as now they have all of this additional info on you online, such as your phone number your email your real name, instead of just your credit card info like a card reader would have. And I am willing to guarantee that their security model is absolute horseshit because they have such a small team of engineers working on the app and the servers.
Literal enshitification
Our university made it so anything you can buy with the card was like 20-50% more expensive tho. I usually never bought anything on campus because of it :/
Yeah at my alma mater the “dining dollars” only covered pretty overpriced crap.
My degree program -> required to be full time and live on campus in specific dorm buildings-> the specific dorm buildings required you to purchase one of the two highest meal plans.
So just to complete specific programs you had to spend $1,000+ a semester on a meal plan for pretty terrible food that you would never see the value of, even if you didn’t want it.
And on top of that, you’re likely paying far more for all of it in the long term via student loan interest.
That made it all the more infuriating to me when my limited set amount of “dining dollars” in the plan (usually $100) only covered stuff like a $4 bag of fruit snacks or a $3 snack-sized bag of potato chips. This was back in 2015 too.
For profit higher education is greaaat.