Many NIU students depend on residence hall computer labs for their printing needs, but not all universities are as lucky.

Even with new print management technology in all Information Technology Services labs, there are no plans to start charging students for printing, said Elizabeth Leake, associate director of ITS customer support services.

In the future, if waste should once again prove to be a problem, ITS may use this technology to help recover some of the printing costs, Leake said.

With the new Vendprint system, which went into effect in the fall, the university can now keep tabs on who is printing and how much.

Printing rules at NIU labs have been in place since the labs were installed in the early 1980s. Lab attendants have been tasked with manually monitoring the print jobs to prevent excessive printing, Leake said.

The guidelines for an acceptable job is 32 images or 16 duplex printed sheets. At this time there is no limit to the number of prints a student is allowed, Leake said.

In 2004, the cost of ITS lab printing consumables was $123,000, Leake said. This amount had increased between 10 and 15 percent every year for more than 10 years, but ITS did not receive a 10 to 15 percent increase in funding to support these increases.

The new system has proven to be successful with 2005 projections indicating a 19-percent savings in printing consumables, Leake said.

Some students and faculty think the time when they will have to pay for copies may be too close for comfort.

English instructor John Bradley said he thinks the system will change because the cost of paper keeps rising.

“I don’t think the funding is there for extended printing,” Bradley said.

Sophomore electrical engineering major Kevin Jacobs said although he has a computer and printer in his room, he prefers to go to the residence hall labs to print. Jacobs lives in Stevenson Towers but usually goes to the computer lab in Douglas Hall because it doesn’t have a card reader.

When asked what he thought about paying for paper, Jacobs said, “I wouldn’t like that, definitely.”

DePaul University in Chicago introduced the Intelliprint system to their students in fall 2000. The system was implemented to ease the amount of wasted paper found in the labs, said Matt Sherman, manager of document services at DePaul University.

The Intelliprint system is similar to NIU’s Vendprint in that students swipe their ID card before printing copies.

“We would walk around and find hundreds of papers sitting in the printers,” Sherman said.

For the first few years the university allotted the students a set amount of free prints. Full-time students were allowed 600 prints per academic year and part-time students were given 300. Monthly reports showed paper use decreased by about half from 10 to 12 million a year to 6 million a year.

In December 2003, the volume of paper use started to increase again. The university performed an audit to see who was using the printers and how much they were printing. They found 13,000 unique users throughout the course of the academic year, which is about half their population.

“Students were using the allotted amount and then went to their buddy and used theirs,” Sherman said.

In fall 2004 students began to be charged 8 cents for every page printed. Students use their Demon Express card, a prepaid declining balance account, to pay for their copies.

Sherman stresses it is not only about the wasted paper. “It’s the color, equipment, service and management. It all takes money,” Sherman said. He said the paper expenses are paid for through a built-in contract.

Sherman said it was “painful to do it step-by-step.” Looking back, he said he wouldn’t have started with giving the students free prints but instead given them $5 of free prints and had them pay after that amount was spent.