Abstract
Many schools offer "no-cost" computing and many have established ways to charge back users for information technology services. Whether paid by individuals or budgeted at a central level, technology costs must be paid. How they are funded very often reflects a school's philosophy about IT and, ideally, helps to shape and influence this philosophy. Quantity and quality, degree of centralization, and administrative complexity of services are major variables. Also at stake is the degree to which an institution wishes to endorse, suppress, control, or expand information technology services. These issues are addressed in this paper, which presents a case study on formulating new budget and cost-accounting models to both finance an institution-wide network upgrade and maintain that network.