To Fee, or Not to Fee: Asking the Right Questions about Student Technology Fees

At a time when state and federal higher education funding encounter continual threats and an ongoing downward trend, information technology leaders are frequently faced with difficult challenges - is it better to reduce costs or services? How heavily does technology impact the student experience, and how tolerant are students of aging solutions? With these concerns in mind, Metropolitan State University of Denver is exploring a student technology fee structure as an option to adequately fund student-facing technologies in a sustainable manner without creating an undue burden on the student body or saddle the University with new unfunded mandates. As part of this exploration, MSU Denver surveyed peers to identify trends in student fee application and allocation, the results of which and subsequent analysis are presented within this paper.