Central Michigan University students unhappy with PrintQ printing limitations

Grants, dissertations and theses — all of these massive documents have Christopher Honts very concerned.

It stems not from difficulty or time commitment, but from the limited printing allocation he has received from Central Michigan University through its new PrintQ system, which allocates $10 worth of computer lab prints for undergraduate students and $15 for graduate students.

Honts, an Iowa graduate student studying industrial and organizational psychology, said the new system will greatly affect graduate students.

“You’ve taken away the graduate students’ right to print off the materials they need,” he said. “I completely understand the desire to go green and what not, and I’m sure there are individuals out there that abuse it, but you trust graduate students with keys to the buildings and hundreds of thousands of dollars of lab equipment, but you won’t trust us with the pages we need to print.”

Eric O’Rourke, a Midland graduate student, also studies industrial and organizational psychology and shares Honts’ concerns.

Many of the grad students in his department print out articles and don’t have traditional text books, he said.

“One journal article can be upwards of 30 pages,” O’Rourke said. “It’s come down to the point where we can’t really print any journal articles because they’ll drain up the queue so quickly.”

Sean Baker, assistant professor of journalism, said CMU faculty are not provided with a printing allocation through the PrintQ system.

He said the university should consider removing the $15 printing limitation for graduate students, but he is more concerned for his graphic design students.

“I make them print stuff in color,” Baker said. Color print costs, he said, are “kind of steep.”

Possible changes

The PrintQ system will probably work for most undergraduate students, O’Rourke said, but it makes no sense when applied to graduate students.

“I’ve had to change the way I’m doing my thesis solely because of the print queue,” he said. “It’s definitely changed the way I’ve had to deal with classes and research.”

Jeff McDowell, Information Technology help desk manager, said the PrintQ system’s allocation was based off of research on printer use and a student focus group. The research evaluated printing numbers for a semester to find how much the average student printed.

He said the data showed approximately 65 percent of students printed less than 250 pages in the semester.

“You’re balancing things like, you’re making sure everyone has got a fair amount and making sure you don’t have people that abuse it,” McDowell said. “We’re really interested in honest feedback. On one side, we do have legitimate printing needs out there and we have to accommodate that, no question. But on the other hand we do have a lot of waste and that’s what we’re trying to stop.”

He said faculty are given free printing at their departmental offices, not a part of the PrintQ system.

McDowell said the current PrintQ allocations for undergraduate and graduate students are not set in stone.

Adjustments may be made in the future, based on printing data. If students are printing more, an increase in allocation will be discussed.