NAU IT Fee Proposal

NAU IT Fee Proposal1

NAU IT Fee Proposal

Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Committee

Approved by the Committee

September 22, 2003

Executive Summary

This document describes the Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Committee (PACAC) recommendationto implement a new Student Information Technology Fee. The committee believes that a fee is now needed to assure NAU continues to provide rich and exciting information age learning resources to students who increasingly expect a wide array of technologies in their higher education experience.

A $4 per credit hour fee would generate approximately $1,500,000. The submitted report shows approximately $2,500,000of direct student services the committee felt was appropriate to cover with an IT fee. Regardless of the actual amount of the fee, the report documents the need for an IT fee and the guidelines for administering such a fee.

The following are new initiatives an IT fee could fund:

• state of the art e-learning environments like VISTA, e-portfolios, or new portal channels;
• computer mediated classrooms that directly support active learning;
• support and products sufficient to transform a student’s personal computer into a viable NAU specific learning platform;
• ubiquitous access for all students to searchable video library content, expanded help desk services, and statewide information learning resources;
• high-end creativity tools and labs to give students opportunitiesto add computer animations, and other multimedia into their portfolios.

The IT fee proposal has these key features:

• $4 / credit hour,
• does not replace course fees,
• every dollar goesdirectly to student IT services,
• studentsare involved in determining new and exciting value-added projects such as e-portfolios, VISTA, e-tutoring, or computer mediated classrooms.

The IT fee supplements, but does not eliminate, existing IT state budgets. TheIT fee helps recover some operational money, but does not remove the need for a healthy IT state budget to cover basicIT infrastructure costs.

The PACAC committee is willing to exercise oversight responsibility for working with students to prioritize, calculate, and expend these funds. The full report establishes a basic philosophy and gives examples of how a fee would be assessed and used at NAU. The report, however, recognizes that more work, by a wider constituency, is needed before a final IT fee proposalcan be fully implemented.

Overview

The Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Committee formed the Information Technology (IT) Fee Subcommittee to review a proposed IT student fee. The subcommittee was asked to explore the following:

1. The strategic need and justification for such a fee.
2. The relationship of course fees to any new IT fee.
3. The appropriate uses of a student-generated IT fee.
4. The variety of perspectives, among differing constituencies, regarding such a fee.

The Needfor an IT Fee

Appendix A addresses some of the statistics regarding the strategic need for an IT fee at NAU. Twelve of our 17 peer institutions have already established a student fee to cover their increasing technology costs. Much has also been written in the past few years about the increasing need for students to be exposed to information technologies and for campuses to have a rich information technology infrastructure to help students in both curricular pursuits and in co-curricular activities that can lead to better information age skill development and job opportunities (Annadam, 1998; Clinton 1999; Motscnig-Pitrick & Holzinger 2002; Wellman & Phipps 2001; Young, 1997). Overall, more than 75% of public universities now resort to an IT fee to cover these increasingly important costs; in fact, the number of institutions adopting such fees continues to rise (Green, 2002). In short, Young’s (1997) view that “computing resources are as necessary as libraries and therefore should be rolled into tuition” seems to have lost ground as more and more universities face the reality that decreasing state revenues are unable to meet increasing student demand for IT services. Given that NAU’s library workstations are equivalent, by design, to open computer lab workstations, the library also faces the escalating costs due to student demands for IT services. Similar arguments exist for Distributed Learning Systems, Disability Support Services, the LearningAssistanceCenter or any service organization heavily involved in Information Technologies not funded through course fees.

Course Fees

Committee members extensively discussed the relationship of a course fee to any new IT fee. They concluded that, at best, an IT fee might subsidize, but not replace, course fees. A student IT fee will be a centrally managed fee; course fees are local to the department and are much easier to adjust as changes in the curriculum occur. A survey of Fall 2002 course fees indicated that over 1,000 sections had course fees in place ranging from $600 for the Arizona Regents’ University Master of Engineering courses to $3 for COM 382. The average course fee was $17, and fewer than half of the course fees seemed related to information technology. Course fees are well understood, well managed funding vehicles that are meeting existing departmental course needs. The committee thus recommends keeping course fees but continuing to explore how to fund new departmental infrastructure needs such as enhanced classrooms through IT fee grant initiatives. The committee concluded that the student IT Fee might be used to subsidize existing course fees, as a way to eliminate barriers for some students in high cost programs (see Option 4 below). Support for this option, however, was weak.

Appropriate Uses of the Fee

Wellman & Phipps (2001) state that “supplemental fees are most appropriately used to pay for direct services where the client, whether students or others, can readily identify the benefits of the service” (p. 16). The committee agrees that a student IT fee needs to directly serve students, and worked on developing a list of appropriate and inappropriate uses of the fee (see Appendix D). Most examples supported student access (labs and library, ResNet, statewide) or services (disability support services, learning assistance center). Many items were not considered appropriate: faculty development, administrative computing systems, and campus wiring infrastructure were examples of inappropriate use of the IT Fee. The committee feels that appropriate uses of the proposed fee focuses primarily on supporting student co-curricular information technology services, which are not funded through course fees.

Such a fee is not a replacement for university infrastructure investments; infrastructure costs need to be fully funded by the state budget. The fee, instead, assures “a stable and recurring source of revenue” (Wellman & Phipps, 2001, p. 16), which builds on the underlying institution’s infrastructure. The committee explored a number of existing services (see Appendix C for one example) that might otherwise continue to erode during Arizona’s current economic downturn.

The committee felt it was also necessary, based on past growth of both quantity and quality of student demand, not only to protect existing services, but to anticipate new services that will be necessary as NAU’s student information technology services continue to evolve. For this reason, the committee recommends setting part of the fee aside each year to fund new initiatives prioritized by a subcommittee with both student and service provider representatives.

A Variety of Perspectives

The final charge by the Provost’s Academic Computing Committee was to research the variety of perspectives among differing constituencies regarding an IT fee. Unfortunately, time did not permit the subcommittee to conduct interviews, hold forums, or send out a student survey. Each of these avenues may be explored in the future. The main committee, however, created the subcommittee to include a broad representation of constituents given the time constraints. Appendix E lists the subcommittee members.

IT Fee Options

The subcommittee considered four IT Fee options. The Provost’s Academic Computing Committee requested the subcommittee to consider the first option, no fee at all, simply to illustrate the problem with staying where we are today.

Option 1: No Fee

Without a fee, student Information Technology services will continue to decline at NAU at the same time that demand is peaking for key services. The recent changes in how the university views email and administrative systems—as well as NAU’s continued growth in work force development and use of web technologies to deliver courses and even academic programs—means that every student needs to use the full spectrum of library, course, administrative, and co-curricular information technology services.

Many of our students have very weak computer skills when they enter NAU. The services used by our students must be of the most reliable and highest quality with sufficient staffing to assure student success. At the same time, due to our increasingly complex network and computing environments, many students also need direct assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some students also need services from the LearningAssistanceCenter or Disability Support Services to assure they will be successful in using the now mandatory technologies at NAU.

Recent budget cuts have eroded IT services just at the time when these services arebecoming increasingly critical for student success. The Academic Computing group is currently short four full-time staff. The Learning Assistance Center is not prepared to provide the level of tutoring that our increased expectations on student computer literacy demand, and Disability Support services does not yet have sufficient funding to maintain the licenses for software they’ve identified as necessary to meet campus needs. To meet budget reductions, Academic Computing had to cut lab hours just when the university added a new winter session, when more classes than ever are on-line, and when budget cuts in other areas are placing greater demand on central labs. The library, while it has not cut hours, has also had to make difficult budget cuts that ultimately impact students while increasing statewide enrollments continue to increase demand for information technology services.

Option 2: Basic Fee

The basic fee would cover core IT services that students use while attending NAU. Two tables are shown below. Table 1 depicts examples of existing services that are candidates for funding through an IT fee.Table 2 provides examples of new initiatives that would otherwise languish. Both tables are just examples; a final budget would need to be decided in the actual budget year by a committee composed of appropriate stakeholders and student representatives.

Table 1

Examples of existing services with funding restored to appropriate levels

Service / Proposed Level / Note
ResNet / $300,000 / New Employee
Open Labs / $400,000 / Open south lab 24hours
Disability Services / $48,000 / Assistive software
Learning Assist. Center / $75,000 / New Employee
Statewide Programs / $400,000 / ITS + DLS costs
WebCT / $165,000 / New Employee
Kiosks / $25,000 / Slight expansion
Student Email / $86,400 / New Employee
Student Modem Pool / $100,000 / local + statewide
Library services / $300,000 / Public workstations, etc.
Total / $1,899,400

Table 2 depicts examples of new initiatives that might be candidates for funding through an IT fee.

Table 2

Examples of new initiatives (perhaps determined through an RFP process)

Service / Proposed Level / Note
Microsoft Campus Select Agreement for Students / $15,000 / Student personal use
Expanded Academic Computing Help Desk / $39,700 / New Employee
Classroom technologies / $200,000 / Modernize classrooms
Expanded Wireless and PDA Access / $50,000 / WAP + access points
Increased Internet Bandwidth / $100,000 / Student demand
Vista Upgrade / $150,000 / WebCT replacement
Electronic Portfolios / $80,000 / New system
Video on demand (pilot) / $45,000 / Deliver library/other content to students
Total / $679,700

Until the IT fee is actually approved, the subcommittee could not solicit full participation from all constituents in developing the above tables. The tables, therefore, simply represent the type of costs that an implementation team could develop, in fairly short order, in order to calculate the amount of money the fee must generate. Other examples discussed include subsidizing software purchases, such as statistical packages, through group purchasing plans, on-line advising and support assistance, and student channels for the new campus portal.

It is important to note that the funding suggested above does not seek to replace the entire state budget for Academic Computing, Statewide Programs, or other agencies seeking funding. Costs not included in the basic IT fee would remain as infrastructure and overhead costs covered by the state budget. The IT fee would allow the university to reinvest existing state budgets back into the state IT infrastructure. In addition to firming up the hidden infrastructure costs, such as the campus backbone and server environments, the IT Fee makes more state money available to fund faculty computer replacement or enhance faculty development efforts, which is greatly needed across campus.

In the example above, the annual total comes to $2,579,100. During the fall 2002 semester, NAU’s 19,907 head count generated 17,189 FTE. The committee agreed it was unfair to charge part-time students the same as full-time, so the estimated IT Fee necessary to cover the proposed revenues would be $2,579,100/17,189 = $150.04 per full-time student per year. The committee recommends using use course credits as the mechanism for assessing the IT student fee rather than a flat fee each semester. Appendix B discusses this calculation.

Option 3: Basic Fee with Separate ResNet Fee

The subcommittee recognized ResNet as a cost that might be broken into a separate IT fee. The subcommittee also discussed the possibility of creating separate IT fees for other services, but there are many problems with this type of granular approach. With the exception of a separate ResNet fee, the practice is not common in literature or at other institutions. Separate feesoften create barriers to access that a university is wise to avoid.

To implement this option would require meetings with Residence Life, support by upper administration and a recalculation of the fees above with the $300,000 borne only by those who lived in the Residence Halls. In the example above, this would reduce the annual fee for all students from $150.04 to $130.58 but then increase the costs for residence life students to $188.49 per year.

It is important to note, however, that while calculating the basic fee in the option 2, no cost was included for the lab servers and other infrastructures that students use to gain network access to the university. Their absence implies that the state budget is covering costs such as student use of current network bandwidth. Breaking out specific student services to charge against a separate fee is always somewhat arbitrary; ResNet remains an easy target because it seems like a service easily attributed to a specific student population. Another view, however, is that all students have network needs and ResNet students are no more likely to use a statewide lab than a statewide student is likely to use ResNet. In short, this view states that all students need ubiquitous access to NAU’s networks, and, on balance, the basic fee proposal distributes these access fees fairly without considering ResNet as a unique population.

Option 4: Basic Fee with Course Fees Subsidized

As stated above, separate fees are potential barriers for access to information technologies that have an additional fee. A single fee is thus more liberating by providing everyone equal access to all available services. Course fees, the subcommittee agreed, should remain under the control of the colleges and departments. College and departmental costs, however, are also rising. At some point, as course fees increase, certain courses or degrees may become high enough in cost to pose a problem for students in calculating their financial aid. High course fees are also subject to review by external oversight and funding may not fully cover future needs.

The subcommittee therefore discussed using the IT fee to subsidize course fees. Feedback from various deans and staff working with course fee budgets made it very clear that control of this money would need to remain firmly with the subsidized college or department. Implementing this option would require a memorandum of understanding with each subsidized department or college.

Recommendation

The subcommittee recommends that the Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Council adopt option 2 (Basic Fee) above with the provision that the subcommittee spend more time identifying the actual budget to take forward as an ABOR action item.

The subcommittee further recommends that the Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Council have oversight responsibility for expending these funds. The Provost’s Academic Computing Advisory Council may also need to establish some rules and procedures for funding new initiatives with the money raised for new initiatives.

References

Anandam, K. (1998). A Call for Action. In Kamala Anandam (Ed.), Integrating Technology on Campus: Human Sensibilities and Technical Possibilities. (Vol. XXXVI No 1, pp. 89-90). San Franscisco: Jossey-Bas Inc.