Many Residence Hall Doors Still Use a Brass Key: That Needs to Change
August 06, 2026Picture a freshman arriving at their residence hall on move-in day. They've grown up with a digital lock on their front door at home. Their family's cars start with a fob. They've never put a physical key in a lock in their life. Then the university hands them a brass key to their room.
That's the reality on roughly half of all campuses today. And for Jeff Koziol, who has spent 20 years working in the higher education security and access space with Allegion, it represents one of the clearest gaps between where institutions are and where they need to be. The Higher Ed Geek Podcast caught up with Jeff at Illumia Momentum in Nashville for a conversation about door data, digital credentials, open standards, and why the hotel industry figured all of this out 40 years ago.
The Data Behind the Door
Jeff's work sits at the intersection of hardware and software, manufacturing the locks and readers that mount on doors across residence halls, classrooms, and office spaces, and feeding event data back into the systems that manage campus access. That data, it turns out, is about far more than security.
“There's a lot of information that can be gleaned from these devices to help identify students that might need some attention from the Res Life staff, the campus wellness staff, to make sure they're thriving and taking advantage of this phenomenal time in their lives.”
A student who isn't leaving their room, who isn't showing up in the dining venue, who isn't moving through the building in normal patterns, can be flagged early, before the problem escalates into a withdrawal or a crisis. That's a meaningful capability. But it only works if the digital infrastructure reaches all the way to the room door, and right now, it often doesn't.
50% of Room Doors Still Require a Mechanical Key
Jeff put a number on the gap: approximately half of student room and suite doors on campuses today still require a physical key. Institutions building new residence halls are extending the digital footprint throughout the buildings, but the existing stock is largely still analog.
“We're in a generation of students now where they may not have ever used a key for anything in their life. And yet they come to their first day of college, freshman year, they're getting into the residence hall for the first time, they're given a brass key.”
The risks aren't just experiential. Physical keys get lost, copied, and taken home by students who never return them. Every lost key triggers a rekeying cost. At scale, across a large residence hall population, that cost adds up quickly.
Jeff pointed to hotels as a 40-year proof of concept for solving exactly this problem. Hotels recognized in the 1980s that electronic locks eliminated key management costs and improved security, even for guests who stay only one or two nights. If the model works for the most transient population imaginable, it works for students.
The Business Case: 98% Want to Get There
“If you asked 98% of our universities who weren't quite down that path yet, do they want to? I think they would say yes. It just comes down to dollars and cents.”
Clearly the desire is there from both students and institutions. The barrier is the return on investment conversation, and that conversation is becoming easier to have. The combination of reduced key replacement costs, improved visibility into student wellbeing, and the alignment with student expectations around digital-first experiences all contribute to a case that's increasingly hard to argue against.
Open Standards Are the Rising Tide
On the technology horizon, Jeff is watching two things closely. The first is the shift from on-premises access systems to cloud-hosted platforms, which requires the hardware layer to move with it. The second is the credential transition: students increasingly want their campus ID in their digital wallet, not in their pocket, and the devices on campus doors need to support that.
What Jeff is most encouraged by is the push toward open standards in the credential space. Allegion is part of the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), a group working to ensure that the technologies powering digital access remain interoperable rather than proprietary.
“A rising tide raises all ships, not just the people that got there first.”
In a space where proprietary lock-in has historically slowed adoption, open standards mean more institutions can afford to make the transition, more vendors can compete on quality, and more students benefit from a consistent experience across campuses.
The Advice Jeff Gives Higher Ed Leaders Right Now
When asked for his closing thought, Jeff’s answer echoed what was heard from nearly every guest at this conference.
“Talk to those that have done it. The higher ed community is an awesome community in terms of collaboration. It's more about collaboration than competition. You have at your disposal universities and colleges and vendor partners. They can provide a lot of guidance toward how to get there, and maybe how to get there better, faster, and cheaper.”
The path to a fully digital campus access system is not a mystery. The institutions that have made the transition are happy to share what they learned. The vendors are at events like Illumia Momentum precisely because they want to help. The resources exist. The advice from Jeff is simply to use them.
Check out the full conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts!
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