Laser Printer — September 30th, 2006
The advertised duty capacity of the Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4200dtn is 33 pages per minute at full speed (HP, 2006). Full speed, of course, assumes that these pages are relatively simple, minimally formatted blobs of text that cover only 18% of the page. If you start sending graphics or PDF documents through this printer, it slows down, as if passing a school zone, to about 8 pages per minute.
I mention school zones only because I’m going somewhere with this introductory techno babble. Please bear with me.
On any given night at the University of Phoenix’s campus in Brookfield, Wisconsin, dozens of students wait patiently (read melancholy and forlorn) in front of a single Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4200dtn. With a conservative estimate, the campus hosts roughly 1,017 students (Apollo Group, 2006). Each student is permitted to print 40 pages on the student printer each day. Consider that classes stretch throughout the week and take place over 4 hours each day, and we arrive at a projected printing demand of 33.9 pages per minute.
To say that a line forms at this printer is an understatement. That I pay a few hundred dollars for each class session doesn’t make me altogether happy to stand in front of the printer, waiting, melancholy and forlorn (read patiently).
For the last 18 months I have complained to campus administrators about the absurdity of making students wait in this line. The cost of adding a second Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4200dtn is about $1,100.00 (Froogle, 2006). You can get a refurbished one for half that price. In response to my pleas, the campus administrators removed one of the paper trays. Now it’s just a Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4200dn. Hewlett Packard doesn’t even list this model on its website. So I can’t tell you exactly how this will affect its performance, though I suspect it won’t help the situation any.
Oddly, about the same time this paper tray was removed, the University of Phoenix announced that it will pay the Arizona Cardinals football team $154.5 Million for naming rights to its stadium (Waters, 2006). The Arizona Cardinals will now play their home games at the University of Phoenix Stadium. It’s a riveting name for a stadium; I know. But the name isn’t what bothers me.
What’s troublesome is, $154.5 Million is $498.39 for each of the University of Phoenix’s roughly 310,000 students (Weinstein, 2006). Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but my classmate Tom and I would have preferred that our $996.78 be put toward another Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4200dtn for the Brookfield, Wisconsin campus. Unfortunately, Tom and I weren’t asked how we wanted our tuition dollars spent.
I understand increasing exposure for the school in an attempt to help attract new students. One could argue that a single football stadium that isn’t even located in Phoenix may be a bad way to do this, but that’s another story. The bigger problem is that the University of Phoenix doesn’t care that these new students will have to stand in line in front of one lonely printer. The university doesn’t care about its existing students. It only cares about enrollment and revenue.
The University of Phoenix, you see, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit on just this topic. On September 6th, it was announced that federal courts will continue to pursue a “massive fraud lawsuit” against the University of Phoenix related to its recruiting practices (Weinstein, 2006). This lawsuit alleges that the University of Phoenix admits unqualified students to its degree programs to keep revenues high (Urban, 2006). I can attest that there are some dullards in line with me at the printer. Forming complete sentences for some of them is. Hard sometimes. I’ve seen there. Writing. Trust. I.
So, if anyone goes to see a Cardinals’ game at the University of Phoenix Stadium, please let me know if the fans are waiting in line for one bathroom. While I’d like to think that we students will get a new printer soon, the aforementioned lawsuit is likely to cost the University of Phoenix $1.5 Billion (Weinstein, 2006). That’s $4,838.71 per student, so they’ll probably have to take a few things from the stadium as well.
References
Apollo Group. (2006). Apollo Group Inc. announces the appointment of Dr. William J. Pepicello as president of University of Phoenix. Retrieved September 29, 2006 from http://www.businesswire.com
Froogle. (2006). Web search for "Laserjet 4200dtn". Retrieved September 29, 2006 from http://froogle.google.com
Hewlett Packard. (2006). Product info sheet: LaserJet 4200dtn. Retrieved September 29, 2006 from http://www.hp.com
Urban, D. (2006). New Cardinals' stadium name carries baggage. Tribune. September 27, 2006.
Waters, C. (2006). Univ. of Phoenix students unimpressed with stadium name. The Arizona Republic. September 27, 2006.
Weinstein, H. (2006). University of Phoenix faces fraud suit. Los Angeles Times Online. September 6, 2006. Retrieved September 29, 2006 from http://www.latimes.com