The printing quota at NIU has managed to decrease costs for the university.

Charles Schumann, ITS manager and administrative coordinator, said printing costs at NIU have fallen by 40 percent. Campus-wide efforts to reduce the costs of printing through a quota were established this semester to make the university greener and to cut expenses, Schumann said.

Students can print 300 sides of paper for free. After that, students have to pay seven cents for black and white pages, and 25 cents for color pages. The cover page on the print jobs does not count against the quota, according to ITS Green Up website.

“Surprisingly, many students have not used up their printing quota and there’s only a few weeks left of school,” Schumann said.

The printing quota will decrease each academic year, according to the ITS Green Up website. Next fall semester there will be a 200-page printing quota and there will be a 100-page printing quota for the fall 2014 semester. For the fall 2015 semester, there will be no free printing.

Kyle Urbashich, ResTech lab technician and sophomore business administration major, said the student response to the printing quota has been mixed.

“While there’s students that dislike the printing quota, there’s many students that do not necessarily mind either,” Urbashich said.

Urbashich said before the printing quota, he witnessed students printing documents they did not need, like pictures and song lyrics.

“With the implementation of the print quota, a lot of the aforementioned types of documents are no longer being printed, forcing students to become stringent with their printing needs,” Urbashich said.

Schumann said once students use up their 300 pages, they must use a copier and pay for printing.

Junior psychology major Venora Head said she feels like the printing quota is not useful for students. She said once students print 300 pages, they have to pay for the rest of print jobs, and not many people have the money to do so.

“I live off campus and for those of us living off campus, we receive no benefits from the money that the school saves,” Head said.

Schumann said every time a person prints something, a cover sheet is printed with a Z-ID number and the assignment title. The cover sheets help identify the owner of the print job since people may not know which printer the paper may have printed from.

“The newer copiers are installed with no cover pages,” Schumann said. “We think it’s wasteful, too.”

Freshman biology major Joshua Brown said he does not see a point to the cover pages that come with every print job besides the fact that it helps people find their print jobs.

“But not everyone prints the same thing and, if anything, it’s a waste of paper,” Brown said.