A handful of U.S. colleges are employing a type of social credit system through various technologies designed to track students as they attend courses and walk across campus.

Universities across the country are using the so-called SpotterEDU app to connect with apps on students' smartphones for the purpose of boosting their "attendance points." The app also sees their absences and logs that information into a campus database that tracks them.

"They want those points," Syracuse University Professor Jeff Rubin, who teaches Introduction to Information Technologies, told The Washington Post. "They know I'm watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change." He was referring to the app's ability to socially engineer his students.

WaPo published a Dec. 24 report discussing the SpotterEDU app.

"We're adults. Do we really need to be tracked?" Robby Pfeifer, a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, told WaPo. "Why is this necessary? How does this benefit us? … And is it just going to keep progressing until we're micromanaged every second of the day?"