to the Faculty Senate
May 22, 2000
Funding as it stands now is not adequate to meet OSU's current and growing information infrastructure needs. NASULGC reports that its member institutions invest from 1% to 25% in their IT operations, with 5% of operating budgets being average. OSU's portion of the budget dedicated to IT is 3%, which puts us at 60% of the average land grant institution of higher education. We are currently limiting Internet speed and access (bandwidth) at peak times for financial reasons, even as faculty try to incorporate the Internet more into their courses. The need for Internet access for research in today's world goes without saying.
Student fees are not the answer. The library is asking for part of the student Technology Resource Fee funds to pay for electronic journals. In Tier I settings, libraries are not held hostage to student fees in order to provide electronic access to ordinary journals and indexes. Increasing student fees to the planned $75 per term will allow funding of ongoing costs of student labs and classroom labs. It will not provide the access to technology that all OSU faculty and staff need.
Perhaps we are a victim of our own success: OSU's being named a "most wired" university raises expectations on the part of incoming and current students, faculty, and staff. These expectations are appropriate for a university that plans to equip students with the knowledge they need to be productive, educated citizens in this electronic age.
Budgets are tight all over campus. The increase in enrollment will provide both additional revenues and additional costs. In making these preliminary recommendations, the Computing Resources Committee has considered the need to provide for a stable infrastructure with some additional money from tuition.
Our preliminary recommendations are as follows:
OSU must make an ongoing commitment to fund its information technology infrastructure so that every member of the faculty and staff can be provided with a basic level of information technology resources. What this basic level is will need considerable discussion; work already done by the College of Forestry may be helpful in moving the discussion forward. The basic level should be the same across colleges and units. The basic level should be in some way centrally funded, whether as a line item in the central budget, a percentage of the overhead charged to grants, a percent of each department's budget, or a fixed fee per FTE. This is another area for further discussion. Individual colleges, departments, and units may fund technology to a greater degree than the basic level, depending on their own resources.The Computing Resources Committee is looking forward to meeting with faculty and staff during the next academic year to discuss what should be funded, by whom, with what resources.
OSU should continue to lobby the Legislature to fund a basic level of infrastructure support. This is a need not only at OSU, but across the Oregon University System and throughout state government.
We hope that the Faculty Senate will support the Computing Resources Committee's efforts to address the following issues:
a) Determining what a "basic level of support" might be
b) Coming to consensus on the mechanism for funding that level of support
CRC members:
Deborah Healey, Chair
Carole Crateau
David Finch
Paul Montagne
Jay Schindler
Bill Uzgalis
Curt Pederson, ex officio
Rick Brand, ex officio