Student ID card

On campus, your student ID card is mainly used to get discounted meals in the student cafeteria (Mensa) and to use the library services. Information about your degree program, subject-related semester and faculty is stored on a chip inside the ID card. It is necessary to validate your student ID card every semester in order to update the information on the chip. Validators are available for this purpose in the Mensa and in the Central Library.

Please note that your old and new student ID card is NOT an official proof of identity.

If you are starting your studies in Hohenheim for the winter semester, you will receive a new student ID card straight away. Fellow students in higher subject-related semesters still have a student ID card with a photo.

During exams, you will now be able to identify yourself with an official photo identity card.

As a VVS ticket, the new and the previous student ID card is now only valid together with an official proof of identity and a current VVS enrollment certificate (can be downloaded from the Student Services in HohCampus).

If you need to prove your enrolment status off campus, for example to obtain discounted admission to a museum, you can now also use a digital enrollment certificate. This is available at the Student Services in HohCampus and can be downloaded to your cell phone and presented. We also expect to offer a verification option for this digital enrollment certificate using a QR code from November.

The previous student ID card for higher subject-related semesters currently has a photo and a so-called TRW (Thermo-Re-Write) strip (gray). Each new semester of enrollment was noted on this strip by the validator by printing a new semester date (validation).

For data protection and organizational reasons, there will no longer be a photo on the new student ID cards, as the university does not compare the photos. Furthermore, the student ID card is not an official proof of identification.

The TRW strip and the corresponding validators are also prone to errors and no longer meet today's technical standards. Due to further technical innovations and the use of the internal chip in the student ID card, the TRW strip is now no longer proof of enrollment.

The previous student ID cards are still valid. They will continue to be validated on a semester-by-semester basis. However, the information previously printed on the gray TRW strip will be deleted during validation and no new information will be printed. Instead, the validity of the card will be updated in the chip inside the card. From the summer semester onwards, you will be able to validate your old student ID card at one of the validators where the new student ID cards are validated and where also staff members of the university validate their employee cards.