Georgia Southern University
Student Technology Fee
Student Technology Fee Guidelines
Two Fundamental Principles
Student technology fee revenues should not be used to supplant current levels of technology expenditures. Institutions should provide evidence that overall institutional technology expenditures clearly reflect that expenditures based upon technology fee revenues are above and beyond normal levels.
The focuses of student technology fees should be on academic or instructional technology and distinctions should be drawn between expenditures for administrative applications or scientific and laboratory equipment, and academic or instructional technology. The fees should provide added value to the educational experiences of students. We defined this value to be oriented toward instructional and not oriented toward other services such as housing, registration, advising, record keeping, etc.
Guidelines
- Technology fee revenues should be used primarily for the direct benefit of students to assist them in meeting the educational objectives of their academic programs. Access is important: access to productivity tools, discipline specific software packages, computers and printers, internal and extra databases, introductory and advance training, and access to networks.
- Technology fee revenues should be used to assure that there are sufficient campus licenses for primary productivity tools such as those found in the Microsoft office products suites and for discipline specific software.
- Technology fee revenues should be used for hardware and network related expenditures that include support of general-purpose or specific purpose laboratories used by students for both productivity and more discipline related activities. Provisions for adequate network bandwidth and access to the Internet and special purpose databases and specialized computing are vitally important in some disciplines and should be supported.
- Technology fee revenues may be used for training of students and, to a lesser extent, faculty and staff.
- Technology fee revenues may be used to leverage other funds where appropriate.
- Technology fee revenues may be used, with caution, for new staffing that is either temporary or ongoing. Such expenditures should be directed at adding value to the educational experiences of students. However, under no circumstances should technology fee revenues be used to fund existing positions that would otherwise be cut from an operational budget, nor should they be used to fund general computing and network positions that have a significant administrative or research support component.
- Lower priority uses of the technology fee revenue include development of software packages, acquisition of one-of-a-kind software or hardware products for faculty used in teaching, adaptive equipment for students with disabilities, and consumable supplies such as printer paper. In general, hardware and software for exclusive use by faculty in the office or home should not be purchased using student technology fee revenues.
- In almost no cases should technology fee revenues be used for administrative uses (includes software or software implementation, such as all Banner, administrative hardware, research equipment, non-networkable specialized scientific equipment, space renovation, or other items or activities that do not have a direct and immediate impact upon students' instructional objectives).
- Technology fee revenues are not used to automatically upgrade equipment previously purchased with technology fee funds; a new proposal is required.
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Last updated 5/11/07.