Stephanie Sherr
Business Reporter
Students who exceed their allotted number of printing credits before the end of the semester will have to pay extra to use school printers, said Humber’s information technology service support manager Ryan Burton.
“What we’re trying to offer,” Burton said, “is a convenient way to print information of a relatively non-sensitive nature at a cost-effective rate to students that may or may not have other means of doing printing.
“Based on the number of pages that you print,” he said, “the system takes credits from your account, and when your account reaches zero you are no longer able to print. If you need to do more printing, you can go to the bookstore and purchase a voucher for $5. The voucher is good for 500 credits…the purchased credits carry over from one semester to the next.”
There are two categories for printing on Humber computers. The first, which is funded by HSF, allocates every Humber student 2,500 printing credits at the beginning of each semester. At a cost of five credits per page, students can print up to 500 letter-sized black and white or colour pages each term.
The second printing category covers large format printing, and is not funded by HSF.
“You will always need to go out and buy credits if you are in applied technology, for instance, and you need to print on a large format printer,” Burton said.
Second-year accounting student Andrew Nunes is one of many students who didn’t know purchasing extra vouchers would be required over the 500-page limit.
“I didn’t know you have to buy them,” he said.
Burton explained because of HSF’s request to increase the number of allocated printing credits from 1500 to 2500, only four per cent of Humber students will likely exceed the printing limit this semester.
According to North Campus bookstore manager Debby Martin, 260 printing vouchers have already been sold in the last week of March alone.
“There’re a lot of students buying print credits from us in March because things are due,” Martin said. “It’s getting to the end of the school year so there’s a lot of printing that needs to be done.”
Sachin Shivaswamy, computer support technician at North Campus, explained how students can redeem purchased print vouchers.
“There’s only one denomination which is $5,” he said. “The user needs to pay five or more dollars, in multiples of $5, and get one or more of these vouchers. Then they just have to come over to the tech support desk and we will take those vouchers for the corresponding denomination and put them into their account.”
