Financial and Strategic Planning Even with the additional revenue generated by student fees, institutions continue to struggle with financial planning for IT costs. The revenue from student charges provides some help. But student fees do not resolve the long-term financial planning issues that confront virtually all institutions, specifically developing and funding budget models that recognize the short 'working life' of critical IT resources. He notes that this is a particularly pressing issue for public institutions, as state officials may be tempted to reallocate technology dollars for other purposes, similar to the way campuses too often raid the library's book budget when money is tight. Most institutions operate as multivendor environments in the area of hardware and operating systems.
Smaller institutions appear more likely to establish standards than larger colleges or universities.
He adds that standards also reflect an effort to simplify user support efforts, as it simply costs less to support one product rather than two or three in a particular category, such as word processing, spreadsheets, or e-mail. But Green comments that the history of desktop computing is littered with shifts in standards and what seem to be dominant products and technologies. Many faculty and administrators will recall that Word Star and later Multimate were the 'standard' word processors of the 1980s. Yet today, these products are gone, nowhere to be seen. So too, today's 'standards' may eventually be replaced by newer, better technologies and products.