European Student Identifier (ESI)

The student mobility processes require the use of a number of services, all of which are involved in different stages of the pipeline and which will need to be able to exchange data about the students who are in mobility.

The European Student Identifier is globally unique, persistent, non-targeted, protocol neutral and data transport neutral.

• Globally Unique: Each student should be uniquely identified across organizational and national boundaries
• Persistent: The identifier should follow the student during her/his time of studies
• Non-targeted: The identifier should be the same for all services involved in the student mobility processes
• Protocol neutral: The identifier should not change value depending on the protocol used. For example, it should be the same regardless is SAML or OpenID Connect is used
• Data transport neural: The identifier should not change value depending on how it is transported. For example, the students should be identified by the same identifier regardless if the it is through a federated authentication flow or a back-channel transfer of records.

The European Student Identifier

urn:schac:personalUniqueCode:<country-code>:<eNS>:<sHO>:<code>

• <country-code> is a valid two letter ISO 3166 country code identifier or the string “int” and assigned by the SCHAC URN Registry.
• <eNS> is the string “ESI” or a string from a nationally controlled vocabulary that denotes that this is a European Student Identifier and which is published in the SCHAC URN Registry.
• <sHO> OPTIONAL – This is the schacHomeOrganization. Required if the student code is provided by the Home Organization of the student and there can be no guarantees that it uniquely identifies the student within the member state.
• <code>: The code of the student that uniquely identifies the student within the scope that has been issued. <code> has to be a URN string following the requirements of RFC 2141

Examples:

Student codes issued and managed centrally at the Member State level

urn:schac:PersonalUniqueCode:hr:ESI:xxxxxxxxxx

Student codes are issued and managed by the HEI

urn:schac:PersonalUniqueCode:es:ESI:uma.es:xxxxxxxxxx

Student codes are issued by sub units of HEI

urn:schac:PersonalUniqueCode:es:ESI:yyy.uma.es:xxxxxxxxxx

schacPersonalUniqueCode

schac_personal_unique_code