Alex,

I would return an object simply because the object can have many properties that can tell you all kinds of stuff about what wnet on. Thr object could, for instance have the following properties;

Object.cStatus && Your status information success mught be blank and 
               && non-success could be a character string 

Object.cValue  && the expected value in your example the student ID

Object.ValueType  && Might be Fi=ull time student versus part time student

etc.

You can see that once you change to passiong and returning objects the potential flexibility is amazing.