Each year, full-time students pay $439.28 toward the Educational and Technology Fee (ETF), which goes toward the upkeep of educational and technological services and spaces on campus.

Barry Olson, associate vice chancellor for business administration at North Carolina State University, explained some of the most common uses.

“A lot of what the fee supports is lab services,” Olson said. “We have computer labs all over the place. They have service contracts on machines; they also have particular software; they have staff that ends up supporting those machines.”

Olson said approximately 64% of the ETF goes toward paying staff members who help maintain various educational and technology resources on campus, such as tutoring centers and computer labs. The other 36% goes toward ensuring those facilities remain functioning and up-to-date. This includes costs like updating the software in a computer lab or repairing a broken printer in a printing lab.

The ETF currently sits at $439.28, but according to Olson, that is not a fixed number.

“The ETF goes out to the colleges, so the colleges expect it at the same level or increased if possible,” Olson said. “Because we’ve been at that same level for so many years, there comes a level of reliance on that that’s difficult to shake. Each college gets their own share, and so taking that away would be really hard to refill.”

The cost of maintaining services provided by the ETF tends to increase annually, Olson said.

“With the volume of people that are connected to the project, as well as the need for raises on occasion, and the cost of doing business —benefits cost more over time, salaries cost more over time — at some point we’ll need to put in some level of percent increase if we keep doing ETF the same way that we have been doing,” Olson said.

The 2019-20 academic year is the fifth in which the ETF has stayed constant, and there is certainly a consideration for those paying the fee as well as those receiving the fee’s revenue, Olson said.

“The total amount of the ETF is about $13.5 million, so that’s how much is collected,” Olson said. “It’s a good amount of fees, so thankfully it affects graduate students and undergraduate students, so both of them receive the benefits of that. But yeah, it’s a challenge. Whenever we have a large fee, we’re always looking out for trying to keep it flat or reducing it if we can.”

The ETF is a versatile fee which funds many resources on campus that students, both undergraduate and graduate, use daily. Despite rising upkeep costs, the fee is in its fifth year of staying constant, allowing students to benefit from printing labs, computer labs, tutoring centers and other on-campus facilities at a constant price.