University deleting most computer labs

The University of Virginia plans to close most of its public computer labs by summer 2011, citing a need to save money.

Mike McPherson, UVa’s deputy chief information officer, said the university was planning to close many of the labs in coming years, but that the economic downturn has stepped up that effort.

“Anything and everything is on the table,” McPherson said of looking for ways to save money.

According to a report compiled by UVa, 99 percent of the Class of 2012 brought a laptop to school, although the university does not require it.

McPherson said percentages like that show how outmoded the idea of general-purpose computer labs (i.e., where students would type a paper) is at the university. The report also states that 95 percent of the time students are running software, such as Microsoft Office, that is likely already loaded onto their laptops.

According to university policy, access to the public labs is limited to employees and students.

As for software students likely don’t have, such as the calculating software Mathcad, McPherson said the university is looking at options that include installing a network so the software can be accessed remotely on students’ computers.

Officials have not decided how they will address students’ need to run software that requires costly hardware that doesn’t come standard on the computers they bring to school. By eliminating computer labs, officials are also considering ways to address student access to printers.

The amount of money saved by closing the labs has not been calculated, McPherson said. The university, however, expects to break even by outsourcing computer help desk requests that currently employ six people full-time and an estimated 90 undergraduates between 10 and 15 hours per week. The full-time employees will be re-assigned to other duties, McPherson said, while the undergraduate students may be able to find jobs providing technical support for the increasing number of professors bringing technology into the classroom. Some of the undergraduate positions will also be retained to answer questions the outsourcing effort cannot handle.

UVa is not alone in rebooting its approach to public computing.

Virginia Tech, which requires entering freshmen to have computers, was one of the first universities in the nation to set up computer labs in the early 1980s. But in recent years the school has worked to phase out the majority of its general purpose labs, according to spokesman Mark Owczarski.

Others, such as Virginia Commonwealth University, say the labs are necessary because students are not always inclined to tote laptops to school for fear of damage or possible theft.

But at the same time students want quick access to the Internet.

“The central labs are always quite busy,” VCU spokeswoman Anne Buckley said in an e-mail. Buckley also said VCU’s computer labs are still a place where students can use specific software they may need only for a semester or two.

Officials at Longwood University and James Madison University (where computer labs double as classrooms) said they don’t have any plans to phase out their computers labs.

An official with the College of William & Mary said there have been discussions about removing the general-purpose labs, while retaining the special-purpose ones.