Posted by aogTuesday, 29 October 2002 at 07:26 TrackBack Ping URL

NPR has a story on right now about how students are making many fewer long distance phone calls on campus phone networks. This is primarily the rise of cell phones - most students have them and use them (instead of the campus phones) for long distance. The issue for the univerisities is that they can't tax calls that go over cell phones, which has a negative effect on the amount of money they can extract from the students. One campus "lost" $400,000 last year. One might also view this as students didn't have $400,000 extra tuition taken from them, but this is NPR.

Apparently, though, some campuses are considering the bizarre idea of getting out of the phone business. Imagine that - concentrating on education instead of money extraction!

NPR profiled one student who had a cell phone. The reported commented that the student was "oblivious to campus financial problems caused by her cell phone". Oh yes, who wouldn't think that the first thought for a student on campus should be the finanical health of the campus and how that relates to personal telecommunications use?