Issue date: 2/14/08 Section: Opinion

Ask students on campus about the quality of Penn's printing services and you'll probably get a variety of answers.

Engineering students get five free pages per day, and Wharton recently lowered its printing prices by 20 percent.

College students, on the other hand, are on their own.

The inconsistency in printing services is a serious problem for students. And with the Undergraduate Assembly taking a look at the issue, the University needs to step up and provide students - across all schools - with limited free printing.

The UA's plan to give students a fixed amount of "printing dollars" provides a balanced solution to the problem.

Printing quotas would allow students access to a basic resource without having to shell out a dime per page, while also preventing unnecessary printing and extra paper waste.

Of course, the University's decentralized approach to computing makes implementing any standardized printing quota fairly difficult.

It's not impossible, though.

Columbia, for example, gives its students a 100 page-per-week quota, which is included in the university's student fees. And many other universities and colleges are designing systems to provide cheaper or unlimited printing to their students.

It's time for Penn to catch up.

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