Amid declining enrollment, lost skills, staff retention challenges, and changing attitudes toward getting advanced degrees (and the debt that often accompanies them), many colleges and universities are cutting valuable programs and staff.
Simple fixes are rarely, if ever, the solution to complex problems, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. However, many small to midsize businesses have faced similar challenges over the past few years. The companies that have continued to see continued growth in sales, employment, and profits — despite those challenges — are overwhelmingly the companies that have invested in high-tech tools and services, including managed print, which typically saves organizations up to 30% on print costs.
How much could enterprise print solutions save the typical college or university? Let’s do a little math…
How Much Are College Students and Staff Printing?
Many schools don’t publish this kind of data, but one university in Minnesota offers its students a print credit that covers roughly 400 pages of black-and-white printing. This same university has over 9,000 graduate and undergraduate students. So if 9,000 students print just half of their allotted pages, that’s 1.8 million sheets of paper.
The cost-per-page will depend on the equipment, supplies, and paper they use, of course, but producing black-and-white only documents on cost-effective equipment will run 5-8 cents a page.
So if every student printed only half of their allotment using only black-and-white ink, and only on cost-effective equipment, that means…
This school may be burning through at least $90,000–144,000 every year in student printing alone.
By the way, if those numbers sound unrealistic, keep in mind that one college admitted to printing 1,545,613 pages in a single semester.
The Hidden Costs of Higher Ed Printing
Of course, in addition to paper and toner, there are other costly problems that universities shouldn’t ignore:
- Failing to meet green initiatives
- Ongoing management, maintenance, and repair needs
- Inefficient equipment use
- IT and staff frustration caused by print disruptions
- Valuable space taken up by equipment and print supplies
- Energy costs
- Equipment decommissioning costs
- Time spent on ordering and tracking supplies
- Potential print security vulnerabilities
The Best Ways To Reduce Printing Costs in Universities
90% of organizations don’t track their print costs. And when you don’t know where your money is actually going, it’s difficult — if not impossible — to understand where even small changes would have a big impact. Starting to calculate print costs can be tricky for businesses with just a few printers in multiple locations. It’s very difficult for even a relatively small college with, say, 20–25 academic and administrative buildings.
Option 1: Use Print Management Software
A lot of higher ed institutions have started using print management software to get at least a few of these benefits. But like most software solutions, these tools have come a long way in the past few years and can do a lot more.
Depending on the software, here’s what these tools can help you achieve:
- Set print quotas and charge for overages
- Enforce print policies
- Automate supply reordering
- Apply paper and ink-saving default settings fleet-wide
- Automatically route large print jobs to the most efficient devices
- Set limits on color printing by user or department
- Monitor printing habits campus-wide to identify more savings opportunities
- Implement secure printing to reduce waste and increase security
- Enable mobile and cloud printing
- Calculate and display the environmental impact of print habits and policies
- Encourage scanning-to-email or cloud document storage
Option 2: Use Print Management Software + a Managed Print Provider
Great tools are really helpful. Great tools in experienced hands are even better.
Case in point, an excellent managed print provider can help you:
- Get all of the benefits of print management software (above)
PLUS…
- Right-size your print fleet
- Anticipate and eliminate most significant print disruptions
- Offload management, troubleshooting, and maintenance responsibilities
- Get hard-to-find prices on equipment
- Get priority access to print supplies
- Pinpoint the most cost-effective printers and copiers for each location and each department
- Get ongoing recommendations to save more time and money
- Protect valuable staff and student data
How To Get Expert Campus Printing Management for Less
Obviously, you get more benefits with option two. But that means you’d have to pay a provider services. However, in this case, the services help pay for themselves. Case in point, when we worked with Minnesota State University’s Moorhead campus, we were able to save them around $200,000 a year.
However, there is a not-so-secret way to get an even better deal, and that’s through a cooperative purchasing organization. There are a number of different organizations that specialize in helping nonprofits and government agencies simplify procurement and secure member-only deals. But E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned, non-profit procurement cooperative that focuses on higher ed.
Currently, E&I offers over 200 competitively solicited contracts, and membership is entirely free.
Marco’s Exclusive Cooperative Purchasing Deals in Education
Our new E&I contracts include exclusive deals on Sharp printers and copiers, plus our managed print services beginning immediately and continuing through January 2029!
We’ve worked hard over the years to bring more to the table, especially for industries that are often put in the difficult position of trying to increase cybersecurity while facing ongoing budget challenges. And we’ve revamped our managed print services offering accordingly.
Click the link below to learn more about how we’ve tailored our services to the special needs of colleges and universities throughout the country!
