According to MSU’s website, the average cost of attending school in Spring 2012 for an in-state student is $5,220.00

Each students pays approximately $110 per course on miscellaneous fees. These fees are charged as “energy surcharge fee,” “library use fee,” and “technology fee.”

Since we pay these fees, we expect that we are able to use the library, computers, the Internet and printers.

These fees, it turns out, aren’t going to cover printing costs much longer.

MSU is going to start charging to print documents from the labs.

First came double-sided printing, next came operation hour cuts, then they put a limit of only printing one of each document.

Now those labs will just be used to surf the Internet and do research.

Of course printing will be available, at a cost per page of the document.

The “technology” fee won’t be waived though. It will still stand strong on your billing statement.

Tuition is rising, gas prices are increasing and jobs are scarce. As a state-funded institution, it’s necessary to allow students to print their assignments without a per-page fee.

Professors are not migrating to the all-digital route too quickly, either. Many, if not most, professors still print out their syllabi, hand out assignment prompts, and definitely print out their exams.

Students will still be required to turn in hardcopies of their essays and projects, but of course the cost of doing them will go up.

Michael Dye, chief information officer at MSU stated that after this semester students will be able to print a certain number of pages, but after that number a cost will be applied per-page.

The “free pages” will be calculated from calculating the average number of pages printed this semester. MSU has incorporated passcode and barcode systems into four of the computer labs, forcing students to enter their M number before printing the hardcopy and scanning their student ID at the printer before the document is actually printed.

Although this pay-per-page system will probably save trees and cut operation costs for MSU, the average full-time student won’t be too happy having to carry around extra change just to make the grade.