Ohio University students might pay a mandatory fee of up to $102.41 to help replace an outdated Student Information System and for other technological upgrades, said Bill Decatur, senior vice president for Finance and Administration at a Board of Trustees Resources Committee meeting yesterday.

The Office of Information Technology is asking the board to approve $40 million in bonds to be repaid over the next 10 years. The new Student Information System will cost about $23 million, with an additional $17 million to upgrade the network infrastructure.

The system, to be in place by 2012, will consolidate many different functions, allowing students to register for classes, pay bills and use Blackboard from one screen.

The current system is more than 15 years old and will lose support from its vendors, who are going out of business, in a year and a half. OU officials have said the current system is ill-equipped to handle the 2012 conversion to semesters.  

Students will likely be expected to pay about 50 percent of the annual debt on the bonds, Decatur said. University budget cuts to other areas are expected to provide $2.5 million of the total $5.3 million a year. Money needed for the project is not in this year’s budget, but has been included in all draft budgets for fiscal year 2010, which starts July 1.

The board would have to approve the bonds at its January meeting.

Chief Information Officer Brice Bible said IT still needs to determine how the new technology fee will be distributed to students. He said students would likely not be charged the entire $102.41 fee the first year.

“We want to look at minimizing the impact on students,” Bible said.

Trustee Larry Schey, head of the committee, suggested phasing in smaller amounts over a number of years.

Trustee C. Daniel Delawder expressed his concern at spending so much over 10 years on new technology that would need to be replaced before the debt was paid.

“In 18 months, the technology will pass us by,” Delawder said.

Decatur replied, “It has passed us by,” adding that he thought 10 years was a reasonable amount of time.

Bible said, though IT should try to replace network equipment every five to seven years, things like cables could easily last 10 years.

Trustees also questioned whether the fee would be allowed under the tuition and fee cap, but Decatur said fees related to debt payment have historically been interpreted as exempt from fee caps and that Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric Fingerhut would review the plan before the bonds are issued.

IT originally asked for an additional $5 million in the bond deal to update Oracle E-Business software, but decided against purchasing the newest version after Oracle “changed its business model,” Decatur said. The software allows OU to manage budget, payroll and human resources. He said the new version did not include some necessary functions, meaning OU would have to buy separate programs for those functions.

“There’s enough of an unknown that we want to take a solid step back,” Bible said, adding that OIT is trying to think of creative alternatives to buying a new system.