Hello All,

In the current economic conditions, the university is considering a number of different options to meet budget shortfalls. One of the options on our list today was:

Should we (KSU) downsize university computer labs (in the age of laptops, etc)?

I am hoping that the university will ask the students, but if not I will make sure that our faculty member representative sees your feedback and then he can pass it along.



I think it would be a bad idea because I went my freshmen year without a computer and I relied on computer labs and the library. Computers are a must today for a student, and there are plenty of people that do not own laptops or they just have a desk top at home.

I personally have never used a computer lab outside of class, but I do think that they are a good resource to have at K-State. With the economy the way it is a lot of students coming to college may not have the economic support and therefore rely on the computer labs so they don't have to purchase laptops. I feel like there should be more student input in this issue because at first I thought that we should downsize. After talking to my peers however, a lot of their younger siblings coming to college won't have a laptop because the univeristy has computers available.

The university itself requires that students access the internet on a daily basis. With K-State e-mail being the only way that professors communicate to students outside of class, and K-State Online providing access to all of our class information, it would be a terrible idea to take away some students only means of using these services. The computer labs allow us easy access to information without having to leave campus to do it. If you expect students to do research and fulfill the tasks that are asked of them for classes then you can't take away the resources to do it with. There are already hardly enough computers on campus to meet the needs of the student body. It would be detrimental to take some away.