Title:  What is the Student Technology Fee?

Question:
What is the Student Technology Fee?

Answer:
For years the University has tried without success to get the state to
provide funding for the technology that students need for quality and
competitive educations. In a partnership effort, UW students and
administration supported a successful legislative effort to enable
establishment of a Student Technology Fee "exclusively for technology
resources for general student use."  The statute (RCW 28B.15.051) allows
the University to establish the fee, upon the agreement of student
government. What is especially notable about the Tech Fee as opposed to,
say, increased tuition is that, unlike tuition increases, the Student Tech
Fee is directed by statute to be spent only on technology for students. 
And at the same time state law directs that the annual expenditure plans
for the fee are approved by students rather than by the administration or
the Board of Regents. As such the UW's students and administration are now
in a position to provide students with the technologies most students need
via the Student Technology Fee process. 

How much is the technology fee? 

The fee is $40 per quarter for a full-time student.The fee is pro-rated
for part-time students, according to the same calculations as tuition. 
This means, for example, that an undergraduate student taking 5 credits
will pay a $20 technology fee. 

Who decides how the technology fee is spent? 

A Student Technology Fee Committee is charged with making the decision on
what projects will be funded out of this fee.  All of the voting members
of this committee are students drawn from members of the ASUW Board of
Control, members of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, and from
UW Tacoma and Bothell campuses' student government.  Non-voting advisory
members include representation from Undergraduate Education, the Graduate
School, the University Advisory Committee on Academic Technology, and
Computing & Communications. 

What has the technology fee bought so far? 

The Student Technology Fee Committee has looked at pressing needs for
computer labs, increased capacity for student email and information access
resources and needs for more dial up connections. 

The technology fee funding makes it possible to add new resources to
already existing computing resources that are available to students. 
These new resources will hopefully make it possible to handle the
continued growth in demand for student access to email, web and other
Internet resources. 

The student modem pools are partially funded by the Student Technology
Fee.  These pools include modem access for students with a local telephone
call from Seattle, Everett, Tacoma, East King County, Olympia and Kitsap. 

The Dante computing cluster, including student email, web publishing and
other services, was partially funded by the Student Technology Fee. Dante
provides an easy-to-use environment for email, web publishing and using
information resources.  Dante is available only to UW students and is
designed to easily grow in a cost-effective manner to support the
increasing amount of student use of network computing resources. 

The equipment in the large general access UWired computing labs 
was funded by the Student Technology Fee.  Additional equipment
has been funded in departmental and college labs all across campus. 

How can I offer my suggestions and opinions? 

You can email the Technology Fee Committee at techfee@u.washington.edu