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How IT Provisions a Student’s Home Away from Home

5/17/2005

By Terry Calhoun

I am not advocating that all IT be considered infrastructure, but if the very basic essential (as students see it) of adequate and 24x7 bandwidth is considered just plain necessary infrastructure, then some of the agonizing over whether we pay another $1,000 a month for more capacity can decrease.

We have those amenities in the physical space of the campus because they were recognized long ago as essential to student lives. It’s time bandwidth joins the ranks of things that we know we just have to have, no matter what it costs to get it. This is even more true in light of decreasing bandwidth costs.

Right now, we spend a lot of time agonizing over bandwidth issues and coping with complaints. We spend time trying to educate the students about shared bandwidth and think of the abusers as the culprits when their downloads are too slow. But do we still have dormitories, excuse me, residence halls, where if one student is a bit excessive with a long shower then others have only cold water left? Not at very many schools we don’t.

We purchase, install, and maintain tools like Packeteer, Tipping Point, and Net Enforcer, and why? The ‘why’ from one perspective is because we just don’t have enough bandwidth. Of course, from another perspective it is because we can’t afford enough bandwidth. But that latter perspective is one that comes from deep within the budgetary constraints of the IT department and as one of the CIO group folks noted, bandwidth is really more of a student service than it is an IT thing. At one campus, the move was made from 12Mbps to 0Mbps at a cost of only $650 per month. I’d bet the staffers there would say that they have saved far more than that in time and energy handling student education and complaints.

Colleges and universities have long been viewed as oases of connectivity in the world. That’s to our advantage. It would be a shame if we let pecuniary considerations cause us to ‘feel’ to students like we are not up there with other places and resources in their lives with regard to connectivity. I bet, in fact, that your institution’s enrollment managers and recruiters would agree if you put it to them like that. They’re beginning to be aware that many prospective students are asking the tough questions ahead of time: “Will I always be able to download massive files at 2 am?”

At a recent conference I attended, it was noted that the current crop of student governments are actually quite-– not docile-–but reasonable. Unlike the students of 15-20 years ago who wanted to protest and fight with the administration, many student governments now actually work with administrators. They propose positive changes, and they often propose them along with suggestions about how to make them happen and offers of partnership.

We’ve all see instances, in the media if not on our own campuses, of students “taxing” themselves to help the institution develop a sustainability program or some better, faster, new email service. Indeed on that CIO discussion, a number of folks mentioned working with student governments to assess needs and find solutions.

Maybe an analogy will help. I don’t know about you, but when I travel what makes a good hotel room for me is (a) great shower pressure and lots of hot water and (b) high speed Internet connectivity. I usually can’t find out about the water pressure until it’s too late, but I absolutely plan where I stay-–where I live that part of my life and the learning involved--based on the existence of high speed Internet access. Don’t you?

So let’s junk the education programs, the monitoring, the cost of buying and operating expensive tools for shaping bandwidth use and focus on providing more bandwidth. Someone, somewhere on your campus who controls the purse can be convinced of that. All you have to do is find that person and make the case. Maybe it could even be outsourced. Your staff has enough other things to do.

P.S. Perhaps the alumni department is another place to look for support for massive bandwidth. It may be hard to convince a grad to give back to the school if that grad spent 4-5 years struggling and frustrated with slow and awkward networks. (Parking’s another story!)

About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.

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