Op-ed by Soren Larson: Students should pay for their paper

In print | Published April 2, 2009

For a bunch of tree huggers, we sure use a lot of paper. Lisa Brunner Bireley of ITS said on Monday that ITS has purchased 1.78 million pages of paper for library use thus far this school year, and ITS might have to buy more. Paper consumption is out of control here and it doesn’t seem like the Green March initiative will change much. Unfortunately, our printing privileges are the problem.
By making printing free on campus, the college implicitly tells students that paper has no value and that treating it like it has no value isn’t bad. Accordingly, students print excessively and have few qualms about not collecting their printouts. But who cares — paper is worthless, right? To reduce paper consumption on campus, the college should charge students some penalty for printing excessively.

While we all appreciate free printing, few of us appreciate its costs. Free printing changes student consumption behavior by distorting the true costs of products we consume. Instead of buying a used textbook online, I’ll download a free or heavily discounted version and print it for free. I don’t want to buy paper fill, so I’ll just use the free paper the college offers us. By giving away printing products, the college generates artificially high consumption, which siphons funds from valuable programs.
It gets worse. In addition to the college creating incentives for students to consume unnecessarily, students have no compelling reason to conserve. We recognize that waste is bad, but the consequences of our excessive paper consumption aren’t clear.

Students need a direct incentive to save paper — students need to pay for it. I propose a point-based system that allocates some number of pages based on a formula that should account for class load, paper demands of certain academic areas and W-course designation. Any printing beyond this amount should add some fee to student library accounts (say five cents), which, after students have passed some threshold, should restrict or limit borrowing until students pay librarians, who can re-enable students’ accounts. The system must include some leeway, so I propose if students or professors find the predetermined printout allocation to be inadequate, they fill out an application that should require students and/or professors to explain why they need more paper. This application process should be bothersome enough to discourage all but the most legitimately paper-hungry students from applying. The college should not be lenient about this additional process.

Groups might also need printing privileges, which they can attain via some application process. To reduce the time students spend printing materials and the number of pages left unclaimed at printers, professors should print and bind reading materials before semesters begin and sell such pamphlets in the bookstore for the price of the pamphlets’ production. This will reduce student printing in general, assign real value to the paper products we consume and simplify my plan.
If this isn’t appealing, there is another, though less effective solution. Given the college’s Quaker heritage, Swarthmore may want to continue to give students unlimited printing privileges. In this case, the college should aim to reduce the paper students print but never pick up. It could do so by requiring students to, after having sent their desired documents to the printer, sign in at computers stationed by printers to command printers to actually print their documents. In this scenario, printers will only print documents relayed from adjacent computers. This solution seems the best because printing remains free and we diminish unclaimed, wasted paper at printers. But this system imposes costs as well. Instead of paying monetarily, students must pay with their time. Given the lines that will undoubtedly form at these relay computers, this time will be considerable. But with time’s opportunity cost varying widely among students, this solution isn’t perfect because some students would be better off by paying for printing with cash and using their time for other things.

All students should have access to the same resources on campus, but current paper usage policy isn’t forcing students to internalize their consumption and waste. I doubt this idea will be popular, but far too many of our actions carry costs that don’t appear in current pricing structures. Global warming just might be the consequence of such a phenomenon. As famous economist Ronald Coase argued, society can resolve externalities by inserting them into the market. In our process of learning, wasted paper is a negative externality whose cost we, as students, don’t internalize. However, if the college demands students pay for paper — even if no money is exchanged — we will see a dramatic reduction in paper consumption.

Discussion

Dan Chung
Almost 3 years ago

“However, if the college demands students pay for paper – even if no money is exchanged – we will see a dramatic reduction in paper consumption.”

I don’t understand. Are you saying that the college can and should issue a clarion call to students to innervate them with a sense of environmental responsibility, deterring students from wastefully printing; or, are you saying that we ~~will~~ impose a monetary cost on printing and that will disincentivize paper use through printing?

BECAUSE IN THAT CASE, MANY PEOPLE WON’T BE ABLE TO AFFORD IT.

Another point: Let’s say that we reduce the number of people printing articles and books by 50%. If we have 500 people at Swarthmore printing all their articles for all their classes, then we may have 250 after your proposed change. Imagine 250 people attempting to borrow the single copies of the books in the library (or even requesting the few available on the Tri-co and ILL network). It would make sense for those 250 people to read their articles on the computer right? Sorry, I’d rather not deal with the migraines and increased fatigue from the glare of my screen. That would add an extra temporal cost in lost work efficiency. Although I suppose we could all pay hundreds of dollars for new, matte screens on our computers or why not simply have the school buy new laptops for everyone! What a great solution!

What is your proposed cost/page? Can you show your methodology? Thanks!

Soren Larson
Almost 3 years ago

Wait a minute Dan. If you remember, the Gazette [Just How much Paper Does McCabe Use?] put together a graphic showing paper consumption at Swat and compared it to consumption at Williams College, a peer institution. The Gazette found that the college of 1,000 students more than Swarthmore consumed 300,000 fewer pages! Amherst, in fact, charges its students 1/3 of a cent per page printed. I’m not sure Amherst’s policy is effective because 1/3 of a cent is nearly nothing, so students, despite paying 1/3 of a cent, probably see printing as free until they see its cost on their tuition bill each semester.

Back to your question. My plan hopefully will allocate the exact amount of paper to each student based on some set of variables, so, as I said, students will probably never have to pay for paper. The idea is to threaten students’ excessive/wasteful printing with some pecuniary penalty.

You wrote: “If we have 500 people at Swarthmore printing all their articles for all their classes, then we may have 250 after your proposed change.” This is incorrect. First, professors should sell reading materials for their classes in the bookstore for some nominal fee, at either the price of the readings’ production or slightly less than that – Penn distributes reading materials this way, so this idea is hardly new. No one likes reading assignments on their computer; this plan wouldn’t threaten that reasonable preference. Second, since the college would allocate students the right amount of paper at the beginning of the semester, no students would have to pay for paper.

What’s fundamental is that the college could dictate campus paper consumption according to some reasonable formula.

I tried to find some empirical evidence for price elasticity of paper, but I couldn’t find any. The price per page of printing beyond what the college allocates students should be high enough to demand student attention but low enough that it doesn’t burden students. What concerns you, of course, is that the college could charge for paper once students pass some threshold, but the plan would hopefully give students more than enough paper during the semester so, as I said, no one would pay anything except some of their time thinking about consumption.

Essentially, the plan ‘pays’ students to think about their consumption. If students don’t care and have the resources to waste paper – they’d have to pay the college. Then we have the students who use less paper, who the college rewards for consuming less by charging them nothing.

Your little quip about laptops is cute, but has nothing to do with the base of reasoning I clearly use in the article. The op-ed relies on the fundamental fact that individuals are best suited to fulfill their respective self-interest; not some governing institution. Forcing all students to buy laptops, when many may not want them, hardly follows the preceding axiom.

Although I’m happy to respond to your concerns, condescension and sarcasm are hardly elements that support strong argumentation.

Jimmy Jin
Almost 3 years ago

“I propose a point-based system that allocates some number of pages based on a formula that should account for class load, paper demands of certain academic areas and W-course designation.”

I think one obstacle to your proposal is finding this formula. Namely, I think the problem is that there is no formula. There are way too many intangibles that affect a student’s paper consumption—what if students have a research paper that requires an indeterminate amount of paper consumption? Even if the professors had input on how much paper to allow, I don’t think the problem would be solved—if I were a professor, I wouldn’t waste my time figuring out how much paper my class requires. I would probably just set the paper quota high enough so that I would be sure that nobody ever ran into problems with it. In which case, there would be no point to setting a quota.

Also, you are misguided in labeling your parameter the “price elasticity of paper.” Instead, you should be looking at the “price elasticity of journal articles,” or the “price elasticity of readings,” or something along that affect. What we are concerned about here is not whether students’ demand for paper is affected by your proposal, but whether students’ demand for readings will be affected. I think the right way to go about this is to realize that by putting a price on paper at the library, you are implicitly taxing (and raising the price of) the consumption of journal articles or readings as a whole because paper forms of journal articles or readings and electronic forms of journal articles or readings are not perfect substitutes.

While this shifting of consumption onto electronic forms may be your aim, standard economic theory says that the tax must reduce consumption of these readings (unless you assume the demand for journal articles or readings is perfectly inelastic with respect to price, which it isn’t). And I think that in the context of a learning institution, any reduction in consumption of these goods must be avoided at all costs.

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