Profit or Loss?

Last August, North Lake College instituted a new policy in the Student Resource Center (K-307) that requires students to pay five cents for each page they print or copy they make. After seven months, the effectiveness of the system is still unclear.

The Pay-Per-Print program works this way: money is deposited into a student’s account, and is then debited from that account when a page is printed or a copy is made. But after the nickel is spent, many students have no idea where their money goes.

According to Vice-President of Business Services Christa Slejko, four cents of every nickel spent is paid to Danka and its sister company OCS, the contractors who provide maintenance, paper, ink cartridges and toner, as well as installing the payment software system. The remaining cent is put into Fund 12, a fund earmarked at North Lake for student activities and services such as athletics, SPAR, Student Government and the News-Register, among others.

The system has had some glitches, according to many staff members. Student Resource Center Coordinator Nancee Ott has witnessed problems with the system firsthand. “Every once in a while we have to reboot because it just quits. People forget their password. It takes their money sometimes and we have to put it back in their account, and we have to trust them to do that,” said Ott.

Internet Services Support Manager Jim Casey, who oversaw the installation of the computer system, said that many of the problems are still being dealt with. He said that initially, the system often failed to register the account, or it created duplicate accounts which left students with no way to access their money. As a result, he said, the system often had to be rebooted, sometimes three or four times a day.

Things are improving slightly, however. “We probably reboot the services now once a day on average,” said Casey. “It’s getting better — it’s still not to our liking because any service like this shouldn’t have to be rebooted on a daily basis, maybe once a year, but not the kind of situation we’ve been forced to deal with.”

The program has had mixed reviews among the students at North Lake as well. CoreyAnn Beavens believes that the program is fair, but that the system leaves something to be desired. “Five cents is a very fair price,” she said. “The system is just difficult to set up. You have to get help. The system is difficult to follow, and it should be self-reliant.”

Ethan Laurence, another student at North Lake, agrees. “I’ve had difficulties setting up my account. It’s very non-intuitive. The system is set up poorly, in my opinion.”

Because of its declining reputation, many on campus jokingly refer to it as “Pray for Print.” District officials admit that there are flaws and they are currently being evaluated.

The Pay-Per-Print program is new to North Lake, but other DCCC campuses have already implemented similar systems over two years ago. “Some of the campuses already had Pay-Per-Print; some of them wanted it because printing has gotten to be very expensive,” said Judy Keller, assistant dean of the Student Resource Center. “It’s the paper, the toner and with all of these nice printers, the cartridges are not cheap anymore.”

For campuses which had not yet implemented the Pay-Per-Print program, DCCC Chancellor Jesus Carreon’s new emphasis on consistency for all campuses kicked in. The Chancellor’s vision is for students to be able to move seamlessly from one campus to another, according to Slejko. “The Chancellor wants consistent services for students on all campuses. North Lake was not one of the campuses which heavily advocated the program,” said Slejko, “but did so in the name of consistent services.”

To implement the services, the District decided to hire Danka and OCS to help, according to Casey. “OCS actually sells the software and Danka does the service for us as far as the paper and toner.”

North Lake was the last college in the District to implement the Pay-Per-Print program. Before the program, the college charged 10 cents per copy but printing was free. This added up to a huge expense. According to Ott, the computer lab registers approximately 8000 to 9000 log ins per month. Of those log ins, Ott estimates that approximately 75 percent result in pages being printed.

As a compromise, when the Pay-Per-Print program was initiated, they college evened out the price of printed pages and copies to 5 cents per page. This is 3 cents less than charged at area Kinko’s stores, and five cents less than is charged at the University of North Texas or the University of Texas at Arlington.

Until August 31, the end of the fiscal year in the District, North Lake won’t know whether or not the Pay-Per-Print program is profitable. “Right now,” said Slejko, “I can’t take a good snapshot.”