Tech Fee: Let Students Decide, by Gregory Donovan and Rob Faunce
by Gregory Donovan and Rob Faunce
On July 21, The Board of Trustees of The City University of New York approved an increase to the Student Technology Fee (STF). Full time students at the Graduate Center will now be billed $100 and part time students will be billed $50 per semester. The DSC has a number of concerns that we feel must be addressed in regards to this increase. These concerns primarily focus on the interrelated issues of the current state of technology within the Graduate Center, the proposed “broadening” of how STF monies can be used, and the role of students (or lack their of) in shaping how Central Office spends STF monies.
Under the leadership of Vice-President Steven Brier and Assistant Vice-President Robert Campbell, the state of technology at the Graduate Center has clearly improved over the past few years. These improvements, in part, can be attributed to a fostered atmosphere of collegiality where students are actively consulted in order to better accommodate how they actually use technology. In this environment, IT has a chance to learn about the unique technology needs of their students while students have a chance to learn about the limitations under which IT must operate. The result is a more informed student community that can better articulate realistic technology requests and an Office of IT that is less dependent on predicting or speculating about the ever-evolving technology needs of their students. The Student Tech Fee Committee and the IT Committee of The Graduate Council have served as the primary vehicles for such student participation, as each committee includes student representatives who have voting rights. However, although improvements are being made, technology services still fall short of fully addressing student needs, an indication that more should be done to involve students at the campus level and particularly at Central Office.
Each month, at the DSC Plenary, students rightly voice concerns about broken printers, money spent on expensive licenses for often inferior proprietary software, and, of course, the dismal state of our email system. While the STF increase may prove helpful in some ways, there is little to suggest these issues will be addressed by the proposed increase. Too often decisions are made (primarily at Central Office) that aim to dictate how students should be using technology rather than accommodating how students actually use (or want to use) technology. The result is a lot of money and effort spent on projects and services which students have little use for, or worse, which students simply can’t use due to compatibility issues. Taking our email system as but one example, students have been demanding email forwarding for years now. The fact that we still do not have email forwarding (a shortcoming which can be quickly and simply addressed) is a failure of governance which no increase to the Student Tech Fee will address, and yet this is the technology issue most frequently brought to the DSC by students: it’s a situation that indicates that the STF increase will likely be perceived as asking students to pay more for the same flawed technology system.
With the CUNY Board of Trustees’ decision to increase the STF, the DSC strongly recommends that this increase be matched with greater transparency in how STF monies are spent, as well as a means for students to participate in this decision making process. It is fruitless to task IT, at both the individual campuses as well as at Central Office, with predicting or speculating what unique technology needs different students have. Students are a valuable source of technological knowledge and they should be the first source IT consults when making technology decisions. The lack of transparency and student involvement at Central Office makes the ambiguity surrounding the CUNY Board of Trustees’ statement that “the University seeks to more broadly define the use of the fee to capture important technology costs not currently covered by the fee,” particularly troubling. The STF already accommodates broad uses, such as paying for electronic databases that would ideally be part of the library’s budget, funding CUNY-wide licenses that GC students either have no use for or could have been addressed with free software, paying for papers and printers which are often used by more than just GC students, and previously funding the salaries of IT personnel. Exactly how will the use of STF be more broadly defined? Proposing such ambiguous expansions to how STF monies are spent, with little to no student involvement is inappropriate. While the GC has set-up vehicles for student participation, there appears to be little, if any, meaningful student participation in how Central Office reaches their decisions.
In summary, the increase to the STF should be matched with greater transparency and valued student participation regarding how those funds are spent. CUNY should not be dictating how its students use technology, but rather, learning from their students in order to appropriately address their technology needs.
The authors are DSC Co-Chairs.
