About StarID
What is a StarID?
The StarID is a username and password that will be used across the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities to access information technology systems and services. As StarIDs are issued and systems are configured to use StarID the number of usernames and passwords students and employees will need to remember and use will be reduced. Ideally, all systems will be able to use StarID so people will have a single username and password.
What can I do with my StarID?
See our list of services supported by StarID.
Why does StarID look the way it does?
The StarID format consists of two letters followed by four numbers, followed by two letters, such as ab1234cd. The StarID format was selected based on analysis of usernames across the entire Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. Your StarID can be used across all institutions so using any part of your name, college, university, TechID, netID or D2L username is not possible because these identifiers may be duplicated across institutions and because of increased privacy requirements and laws like FERPA. Even email addresses are assigned and re-assigned at many institutions. The StarID is never duplicated and never re-assigned. This means that once issued, you can use the same StarID every time you visit a participating institution over the lifetime of your relationship with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.
Reasons Behind StarID Format
- Non-name based identifiers will not have to change if a name changes (think marriages).å
- Non-name based identifiers have no name privacy issues (e.g. FERPA, HIPPA) associated with them
- Non-name based identifiers do not have name collision problems. For example, if the identifier jsmith has been assigned to John Smith, but Jackie Smith comes along next month what will Jackie's identifier be: jsmith1, jasmith?
- A consistent format prevents the need for "filler" characters that may result in an undesirable identifier
- A consistent eight character length facilitates ease of integration with legacy systems. Legacy systems can, generally, accommodate an eight character identifier, but seldom one that is longer than eight characters.
- An eight character identifier is easier to remember than one that is longer.
- A consistent, randomly generated, eight character credential will never need to change and can, therefore, be assigned to one person for the entire duration of a person's affiliation with MnSCU
- The StarID format allows us to assign, approximately, 4.57 billion StarIDs (e.g.: 26^4 * 10^4). For some context, this means we could assign two new StarIDs every second of every day for 34 years before running out
Additional Information About StarID
One common concern is that the StarID is too difficult to remember. Something to keep in mind is that the StarID is meant to become your primary login identifier across the entire MnSCU system. If this identifier will be something that you use multiple times a day it is likely that you will remember it.
The StarID is not expected to be used as the name portion of an e-mail address. The various e-mail systems used across the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities all have the ability to use aliases (different names for the same mailbox) so it won't be necessary to have the StarID be part of an e-mail address. In fact, our Identity and Access Management team prefers that the StarID not be part of an e-mail address.
