Privacy invasion

Over thanksgiving it seems UTD IT is requiring you to install their certificate to use Comet Net, what does this mean?

The University can now decrypt all HTTPS traffic going in and out of your computer, please use a VPN this is a huge invasion of privacy.

Not sure why they would even need to do this, they could theoretically even see bank login credentials just in plain text!

Thoughts? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that this change has been added over thanksgiving.