October 9, 2008
Iowa State U. Will Make Students Pay to Set Up Land Lines
The Gazette, a newspaper serving the area around Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, recently ran a story about a new policy at Iowa State University: The institution will make students pay to have land-line telephones hooked up in their rooms. Given the triumph of cellphones, we would have thought that this was old news. Certainly, colleges used to bring in some money by providing students with telephone service, but that source of revenue dried up years ago. In fact, it costs money just to hook up the phone.
“Beginning next year, ISU will turn off phone service in dorm rooms and students who want it will have to pay to hook it up,” The Gazette reports. “ISU’s Department of Residence will put the $700,000 in annual savings toward installing wireless in all rooms, at a cost of $6 million to $9 million. Students support the move, officials said. A survey last year revealed 62 percent of ISU students never use a land line phone in their room, and 96 percent had cellphones.”
The article notes that some colleges, like Luther College and Grinnell College, still provide land lines for emergencies. But a Chronicle story found that land lines were ineffective for delivering emergency information.
We’d be interested in hearing whether your institution is cutting off land lines. —Scott Carlson
Posted on Thursday October 9, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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My son is at the University of South Carolina. They charge to have a land line in the dorm room. The vast majority of students there use cell phones exclusively.
— curious Oct 9, 04:44 PM #
The next-to-last paragraph seems to imply that institutions are primarily interested in maintaining landlines to use them to disseminate emergency information. To the best of my knowledge, the primary reason many institutions are retaining landlines is to ensure that residents can make outgoing emergency calls that send accurate location information to 911 operators.
— Kevin R. Guidry Oct 9, 04:54 PM #
We provide land lines in all our residence hall rooms at this time. However the student usage has dropped off considerably over the last three years
— James E Cooper Oct 9, 05:52 PM #
Well. I am from Iowa State University. Getting landline from ISU makes sense. If they do, they need to deduct cost of having landline from their room and board. Also ISU needs to use saving to update their wireless access point on campus outdoor and buildings. The access points they placed in rooms are old and outdated. The network is spotty and no slow. Outdoor coverage is not good at all.
— unhappy ISU employee Oct 9, 06:12 PM #
The Story Is About The University of Iowa (Not Iowa State University [ISU])
— Gerry McKiernan Oct 9, 09:29 PM #
Landlines are like treeversions of the news…ancien regime…I went wireless in my home aboot two years ago…net, phone, and tv…something wired is a failed business model for the average residence…also the cell is a better device for emergencies…
— deadmonz Oct 10, 06:36 AM #
It’s a shame the original poster didn’t bother reading the article closely enough to notice the difference between University of Iowa and Iowa State University.
And as a university administrator, I thought it was common practice now to require students to pay for landline installation. No one’s using them.
— Anna Oct 10, 08:02 AM #
We installed the infrastructure for land lines in our new housing but if the students want phones (other than their cell phones), they have to contact the local telco for installation and service.
— Pat Oct 10, 08:48 AM #
Agree with #2 on the reason we still provide land lines to students with costs built into room charges. We still have cell reception problems in some buildings built in low spots. Until that is remedied, I want to keep the reliable service available.
— DJH Oct 10, 08:55 AM #
Gerry,
The Gazette story starts off by mentioning students at the University of Iowa, but continues to discuss the new plans at Iowa State. All the information in the Chronicle article is accurate.
— MEM Oct 10, 09:25 AM #
At Dixie State College of Utah, we charge students for land lines. The number of students requesting them has dropped from approximately 90% of the residents paying for the service 5 years ago to a small handful, possibly 2 or 3 students this year and last.
— Dallin Young Oct 10, 11:53 AM #
I just read that what has happened was that the money people in Asia, Europe and the Mid-East became concerned about our spending habits and the elections. They think that Obama will win and along with the Democrat congress will spend wildly. So they pulled their money back and our spending is all based on borrowing abroad and it froze the money pipe lines. Makes sense why risk your savings if you see the debtor nation about to launch out on dramatic increases in socialist spending. If I had my money in a company with a lot of debt and they get a new ceo who proposes more and more spending including buying each worker a new car and a new home and a pension and health insurance for life…I might quickly decide to pull my money out just to be safe.
— fred douglas Oct 10, 02:48 PM #
Fred, you’ve confused the U.S. with a corporation, which it is not. Even though it acts like one. If you want to criticize runaway spending look at people who spend $100 a month on net, cell phone, and tv packages. People spend more on crappier technology like the cell phone than they do on a superior technology such as the landline. But quantity rules here, not quality. Foreign countries will continue to invest in our gullibility to the confidence man. I wonder what the typical college student spends on a cell phone per month. Probably enough to feed the residents of Haiti for a year.
— Louis Morgan Oct 10, 11:45 PM #
Mr. Morgan, I couldn’t agree with you more! This has become a cell phone nation, however. College students—and many, many people no longer in college—seem to feel that they can’t get along in life without communicating in transit with people who aren’t present. To me, that’s inauthentic living, and people who constantly have those tiny things stuck in their ears are, to me, cell phonies.
— Phil Schwartz Oct 13, 09:49 AM #
Sometimes landline reliability is a good thing. If you move you house to total wireless and then if you are in a bad storm and lose power for long period of time(a week or more), how do you keep the cell phones charged unless you are fortunate to be in a location that keeps generator back-up like most Universities do now.
— Grumpy Oct 16, 11:25 AM #