WHY PAY FOR PRINT
Since Fall 1999, printing in OCCS-supported academic labs has increased at an annual rate of 15-18%, reaching a total volume of five million pages this past academic year. More importantly, over 50% of the pages printed are not taken by the student; the paper simply ends up in the recycling bin.
Staff from OCCS met with the Student Body Presidents in 2001 and 2002. Several of their suggestions were implemented:
- Provide instructions for printing only the pages needed, as opposed to complete documents.
- Post signs to encourage students to "print only what they need."
- Provide a computer station with a printer queue so students could see that their job was in the queue to print and how many jobs would print prior to their job.
Other suggestions - such as hold all jobs in a queue to be released by the consultant and automatically delete a job if the same job already existed in the queue - were not implemented because this type of functionality is not a standard tool with networking systems. Printing costs continued to rise at the same rate.
OCCS began researching Pay for Print options mid-summer 2002. The primary goal was to solve the escalating printing volume problem with minimal impact to students, both financially and in how they print. To implement a solution to meet this goal, data was needed. At the beginning of the 2002 fall semester, OCCS installed a low-cost product that works within our network environment to monitor actual number of pages printed by each student account. During fall semester, students printed between 1 sheet and 11,000 sheets; 82% printed under 500 sheets. OCCS does not track "what" students print; only the number of pages printed.
As part of our research and data collection, we talked with colleagues at other colleges and universities about the pros and cons of the systems they use. Many colleges and universities contract with vendors for lab printing. Most of these services require students to purchase (via a vending machine) a printer card. The student sends the job to the printer and then must go to a "print station" to swipe their card and release the job to the printer. These systems are costly and due to the volume of printing, this type of solution would create lines at the print stations and would inconvenience students. With the cost of the vendor contracts, most of the colleges/universities provide little or no initial quota (number of pages allotted to each student at the beginning of each semester). Printing costs per sheet are generally between $.05 and $.10 per page.
Based on the information collected, OCCS developed a plan that utilized existing software and some programming to solve the printing problem. The solution requires minimal overhead, thus provides the optimal page quota and cost per sheet for students. The research data and the plan were reviewed and endorsed by an advisory committee, with representation from all colleges, which provides oversight on classrooms and computer labs. In March, the Student Senate was provided information about the initiative. In late April, information was provided to the student body, via handouts and signs in the open academic labs, announcing the implementation date of July 1, 2003.
The Student Senate had requested that we modify the plan to allow for students to "carry over" balances at the end of each semester and to allow for all "damaged" pages to be refunded to the account. A vendor solution that provided carry over function was researched again. The system, which utilizes the University one-card system, is costly and would require major configuration changes to network environment in the labs. This cost and additional staff to manage the manual process of refunds would only reduce the initial quota and/or raise the price per page.
The plan that will be implemented is an inexpensive software solution, with minimal overhead, that allows OCCS to allocate a substantial portion of the money budgeted for lab printing to providing a significant initial page quota to students. The plan does not change how students print. Additionally, if current printing patterns remain the same, the vast majority of students will not be negatively impacted.
Other positive aspects of implementing the plan include the replacement of lab printers, many of which had printed well over two million sheets beyond the manufacturers designated useful life. New printers were selected with the plan in mind, including providing duplex capabilities that will help students reduce the number pages charged to their quota.