‘Free’ Printing? Not at These Schools

Four managers detail how they ended “free” student printing, cutting waste and saving money for their schools.

Sandy Griffin
Copy Center/Communication Services Administrator

St. Louis College of Pharmacy

Robert Mascarenhas

Manager, IT Support and Printing Services

University of Technology

Sydney, Australia

Don Harty

Manager, Printing Services

University of North Carolina

Wilmington

Newell Fogelberg

Director of Imaging Services

University of Colorado

Boulder

AT MANY universities, students in the computer labs are still allowed to print as many pages as they want—at no charge. This has led to tremendous waste. But in-plants who seek to change the situation are met with resistance from groups who don’t want to give up “free” printing.

The four managers in this article are among those who have successfully addressed the problem. Here’s how they did it.

Before the Change:

Sandy Griffin: Paper and toner waste was a major issue. Students doing research for a paper would print out everything on a Web site, only to keep the first couple of pages. Housekeeping reported that daily they would be throwing away tons of printed material from the computer labs.

Robert Mascarenhas: Equipment was overused, resulting in unreliability and increased wear and tear, student demands for the university to provide more printers, labor impact on IT support staff and increased network traffic.

Don Harty: We saw students printing every imaginable type of document. To control cost, the labs were placing a ream of paper into the printer at the top of each hour. Once that was gone, the students were on their own. Labs were placing the printer setting on the lowest possible to conserve toner. This made prints look bad and this irritated the students.

Newell Fogelberg: There was very little hard data on what the university was spending on printing. Equipment was replaced in a fairly haphazard manner. There was also no dedicated load and fill service. So often printers would be down for long periods of time or they would simply be out of toner.

Kicking Off the Process:

Griffin: We did a study of the prior five years of paper/toner use, before and after students were allowed full access to the Internet. We involved the president and the dean of students.

Mascarenhas: We met with the Students Association and related unions, and documented and presented the situation as described to the senior executive and the vice chancellors management group.

Harty: We partnered with the library and the information technology department responsible for the computer labs. They were very frustrated and wanted out of the printing business. We started talking to our vice chancellors of our areas about the benefits of this program. Once we got their support, we started talking to the provost for his support.

Fogelberg: We formed a task force to gather information and to seek out how other universities were doing print-for-pay. We then formed a partnership agreement with Information Technology Services, Housing and Libraries, with Imaging Services as the managing partner. We formed a consensus on a proposed structure for print-for-pay; we call it the Campus Printing Initiative. It includes funding sources, payment and technical structures.

Once the agreements were formulated on the director/dean level, the issue was then carried forward by the associate vice chancellor of Academic Affairs for Technology to the vice chancellors for their approval.

We had to get technical support from the operators of the campus card, The BuffOne Card, the IT lab supervisors, the Libraries and Housing technical support people as well. For the RFP process we also involved our Procurement Service Center.

Finally, during the whole initiative, we involved student government and environmental advocacy groups on campus.

Implementation Date:

Griffin: Five years ago.

Mascarenhas: March 2003.

Harty: We will have the system installed for beta test during summer school. We will fully roll out the program at fall semester.

Fogelberg: We began charging in August of 2003.

Current Procedures:

Griffin: Currently students at St. Louis College of Pharmacy receive 100 non-chargeable prints per semester. All prints over and above this amount are charged to the students’ account via the Business Office at $.055 per print. This cost is in the process of changing to $.035 per print over the 100 non-chargeable. St. Louis College of Pharmacy charges for actual cost per print with no up-charge or profit.

Mascarenhas: No free copies unless a need can be established. Students purchase a copy card from vending machines, print from a lab PC or Mac in the usual way, proceed to a release station located near the printer and swipe their card to release their prints. The system checks whether the card has sufficient cash value before a print is processed.

Harty: We will give the student 100 free prints to start with each semester. After they use these free prints, they will pay for each copy.

Fogelberg: We use our campus BuffOne Card, which also functions as a student ID card. From the support funding the students currently pay for IT fees, we take a portion and devote it to a free quota. This is currently at $9 per semester per fee-paying student and is loaded on the card at the beginning of each semester. Any excess quota is carried from semester to semester, but the account is washed out after the spring semester. After the student uses his/her quota, they have to charge their card either online with a credit card, with cash at a couple of locations, or with a check over the counters of our copy centers.

Student Reaction:

Griffin: St. Louis College of Pharmacy made the change before fall semester began. The college announced beforehand that it was planning on charging per print. We implemented a mass e-mail and also announced the upcoming plan during student orientations. We placed informational flyers in all student mail boxes explaining the change, including how to use the printing and how the charging system works.

We let the student council decide on how the students will pay for the printing. That helped soften the blow, as did giving each student a number of free prints. We did receive complaints for about a year but all concerns were from lack of communication.

Mascarenhas: It was a difficult process of negotiation. There was massive revolt from the students who weren’t prepared to give up the privilege. Several hours of discussion with student representatives were involved. We negotiated a temporary introduction for a semester, which was to be reviewed. The overwhelming reduction in print volume and resulting savings hardened the university and made it more difficult for the student association. The issue was raised on several occasions over the next year or so. It is now history and the print charging process remains.

Harty: Most students see this as no big deal, as long as they have a reliable system and they can print when they need to. The culture will change within a year or two and this will become the new standard on campus.

Fogelberg: There was a great hue and cry from the students when this was initiated, that was offset by environmental gains. By now the political furor over paying for the prints has almost completely dissipated. So, generally, all constituent groups are content with what is in place.

The End Results:

Griffin: Waste decreased to almost null. With more students having wireless access to campus printers, printing has increased three-fold.

Mascarenhas: In 1998 the total cost of lab printing was $191,000. It grew to $423,000 in 2002. The volume in 2002 reached 13 million; this has now dropped to approximately 2.5 million prints and a value of $55,000.

Harty: We expect cost savings, reduction of waste and a huge increase in customer satisfaction. This was an 18-month process to get where we are today. We were close to implementing last spring, but we were put on hold for one more year. There are still some skeptics from the deans about the final cost, so we are piloting this year with Printing Services supporting part of the program from our own fund balance.

Fogelberg: Our initial three goals for the program were to reduce waste, create equity for printing costs (only those who used printing would pay for it) and contain costs. We feel we met those initial objectives well.

We estimated that, prior to the Campus Printing Initiative, there were 15 million prints on campus in the partners’ labs. We are looking at around 4.5 to 5 million prints this year, and about 65 percent of those will be double sided. The bulk of the printing is paid for by the lab users, so we have assigned the burden of the cost to the users. IPG