And so it begins... Seton Hill University to give all students an iPad

ok, so i'm a student at Seton Hill entering my senior year. FYI, Seton Hill is not just some "little university". we've been named one of the Best Baccalaureate Colleges in the North Region by U.S. News & World Report and a Best Northeastern College by the Princeton Review in 2009. they just put in a brand new, state of the art, multi-million dollar Performing Arts Center, are expanding the visual arts department, incorporated the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine program, and have just added a new Orthadondics program. Not to mention, out PA program is one of the hardest to get into. they've been making advances in our University for years and this is only to help us prepare for the professional world. and just so you know, the only thing going up in our tuition is that now we have a $300 technology fee, which is not much of a rise from what we did pay. also, the freshman who are getting MacBooks get 2 computers during their stay at SHU. they have the first one until their Junior year and then give that one back and are presented with the newest model. their old MacBook is then refurbished and given to an Adjunct Professor at SHU.
so EXCUSE US for trying to make technilogical advances and create better learning environments.
and yes, tuition is $32,000 or something like that. but i know hardly ANYONE who pays that. i personally pay $2,000 a semester while if I had accepted my position at someplace like PSU Main i would be paying $21,000 a year. at SHU, I get one-on-one instruction and have personal relationships with my professors. I love PSU, don't get me wrong. but when I talk to some of my friends who go there and they tell me about some of their classes with 300 students in them .. I'm glad I picked a smaller school.

I don't know what info TUAW is running off of, but george fox announced iPads like 2 months ago. My school, a little tiny school in Eugene Oregon, announced about 3 months ago that all full time students next year will get iPads.

The students are getting MacBooks too, so just preload any university apps into iTunes.

And why did you address AOL? This is TUAW. Do you even know where you are?

Stupid, if you can't master a Reply button (triple post FTW!), I question your ability to "gut" a toaster, never mind Seton Hall's IT infrastructure.

Wow. Let's do some basic math:

~2,000 students
x $200-$300 each per semester (just for the new wifi)
=
~$400,000 - $600,000 PER SEMESTER in costs just to pay for the new wifi?!?

How long will that go on? Is it just for one semester, and then the cost goes back down to $100, or is this an open-ended thing?

That's just ridiculous. Who do I contact at Seton Hill? I can gut their existing system and completely replace it with better technology (and I don't even know what they use, now!) for half that amount (per semester).

Wow. Okay, class, let's do some basic math:

~2,000 students
x $200-$300 each per semester (just for the new wifi)
=
~$400,000 - $600,000 PER SEMESTER in costs just to pay for the new wifi?!?

How long will that go on? Is it just for one semester, and then the cost goes back down to $100, or is this an open-ended thing?

That's just ridiculous. Who do I contact at Seton Hill? I can gut their existing system and completely replace it with better technology (and I don't even know what they use, now!) for half that amount (per semester). It's WIFI, for God's sake ... not a new cafeteria!

I'm a university prof., and I think this actually could be done in a way that's not just a gimmick. Preload the ipads with links to core documents (e.g. student handbook, campus map, etc.)--getting rid of the need for Freshman orientation packets saves some money and some trees, and students are notorious for losing hard copies of the stuff.

Have iCal pre-subscribed to the campus' calendar of events.

Many colleges have a shared book/summer reading, and it could be pre-loaded. A college that follows great books curriculum could arrange a bulk deal for the texts and have them preloaded.

I also think there would be some fantastic class collaboration and communication tools that could be built if you knew that all the students in the room had iPads.

>> There won't be much of a change in our tuition.

Make no mistake, the students are paying for this and then some. There are many ways to hide these fees. They'll get their pound of flesh. I'd prefer if TUAW chose a word other than "give." It implies philanthropy which is not part of this equation at all.

This is a blog after all, so I don't expect exactitude on par with professional journalism, but there are an awful lot of qualifiers flying around. Do some digging. Quantify the change in fees so this article rises above mere speculation and random musing.

Considering that there are several free utilities that allow you to print from the iPhone, I don't see why you couldn't do the same from the iPad.