[2060] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NREN and the Economics of Mainframes Versus Workstations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dan Schlitt)
Thu Jan 23 09:19:15 1992
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 09:17:18 -0500
From: Dan Schlitt <dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com, cook@tmn.com
My experience with university computer centers is that the cost recovery
model was phony. The computer center had costs that were pretty well fixed
and the total amount had to be "recovered". The result was an internal
acounting exercise between the center and the academic units where it was
made to look like the academics "paid" for computer services from the center.
Even worse for the academic side was that this phony accounting had
the academic units subsidizing administrative computing. The academic
units "paid" for a larger proportion of the center costs than the
proportion of the computer resource that they got.
The impact on recipients of external money tended to be phony as well.
One method that I experienced was that if you asked for and got money in a
grant for computing then the center automatically encumbered it and
got it over the life of the grant. The result of this was that money
for computing was not asked for in the grant. It was a part of the
institutional contribution to support of the research.
The cost recovery model led to a game of measure and counter-measure
between the center and the users where the center always recovered its
(fixed) cost and everyone lost in terms of computer services.
If you had asked me directly I would have said that the trend over the
last decade has been a switch from the cost recovery model to the
library model of providing computer service. It sounds like you have
been hearing the contrary.
The fixed annual charge model that has been so sucessful in building
the Internet is also the best model for providing computational
resources in an academic institution.
/dan
---
Dan Schlitt Engineering Computer Facility Manager
dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu City College of New York
dan@ee-mail.engr.ccny.cuny.edu New York, NY 10031
(212)650-7885
