Imposition of IT services fee (RM100)

Update (June 30, 2008): The imposition of this fee is planned by the University management. We have just been told that the fee amount is still pending consideration; it has not been finalized yet.

Update (July 1, 2008): Please refrain from using derogatory terms, name calling and any form of vulgar remarks when commenting. Such comments will be deleted on sight. All comments for this particular post will be printed and submitted together with the report that we are preparing to show the students' response towards this issue.

---

Assalamualaikum and very good day to all,

We, from the Students Representative Council, Multimedia University (Malacca Campus) would like to hear some opinions/suggestions from students regarding the matter explained below:

Imposition of IT services fee (RM100)

The University is planning to impose an IT service fee of approximately RM100/year on all students starting from the academic year 2008/2009 (this trimester). The fee covers the maintenance fees of MMLS, course registration system, wireless services and other online systems. Besides this, a portion of the fee will be used to upgrade the bandwidth of Malacca campus (from 16 Mbps to 34 Mbps).

Unfortunately, there are several controversial issues:

1. Although the students from both of the campuses will be charged the same fee, Cyberjaya campus will get a better service in terms of bandwidth increment (from 34 Mbps to 100 Mmbps). This is because the hardware of Cyberjaya campus is more advance than us and our hardware is not able to support the 100 Mbps bandwidth (Cyberjaya hardware can support up to 400 mbps while ours can only support up till 100 Mbps).

2. Not every student is using the wireless service.

3. CITS cannot guarantee that after the imposition of the IT services fee, all the flaws that we encountered before (eg. system down during the course registration period) can be solved once and for all.

4. Number of concurrent connections to the web services such as MMLS and course registration may or may not be increased. If it is not increased, the increase in bandwidth would not make much of a difference as the number of users allowed to access the said websites will still remain the same. As such, at high usage periods (i.e. before/during exam for MMLS & course registration days) students will still have the problem of not being able to access the websites. It would be akin to widening the roads but still having the same number of exits – You’ll get to the exits/entrances (i.e. websites) faster. Once there, you’ll have to wait in line (for countless hours) just as before.

However Mr. Zaidy Jaafar, the Director of Finance Division, has said that the fee amount has not been finalized yet. Finance Division will review the amount and have a meeting with us in the near future. He also requested a report from SRC regarding this matter (including all the suggestions and the problems that have been encountered by students).

Pursuant to this, the SRC would like to know the students’ perspective on this issue. In addition to that, it would be of great assistance to us if you could include some suggestions so that we could prepare a good report.

Any comments or suggestions can be made in the following ways:

1. Send your comments or suggestions to the SRC room (written)
2. State your comments or suggestions in the comments section of this blog.

Also, we have proposed for Finance Division to conduct an open discussion session with students where they (the Finance officers) will explain the need for imposing the fee to the students and at the same time get the students’ opinions on this matter. We hope if this materializes, all students will attend the session and make known their views.

That’s all for now. We will make constant updates on this matter from time to time. Do check back regularly.

Thank you.

"Actuality in Action, Integrity in Principle"

Regards,
Students’ Representative Council 2007/2008
Multimedia University
Malacca campus