A university committee is reviewing Northwestern University Information Technology in the wake of accusations that its service is inferior to and more expensive than private companies.
The 18-member committee is researching whether the Internet and phone service rates that IT charges individual NU schools are competitive in the market. Two committee members said the university could save money by contracting with a private company, which would eliminate some of IT’s services.
IT came under fire last year when it decided to charge the schools for its services instead of having the university absorb the costs as it previously had. Since the policy change, individual school officials and professors have criticized the in-house IT, calling it a monopoly with poor service.
Medill administrators recently started investigating IT’s prices while searching for phone and Internet service for the school’s new Chicago offices, which they will share with the School of Continuing Studies.
“It’s extremely aggravating,” Medill Prof. Mindy Trossman said. “We found a better price and a better product. It seemed like a no-brainer. But Northwestern forced us to shop at the company store. It’s a sweetheart deal.”
Medill administrators found that IT’s monthly prices were nearly $2,000 more than private companies’ bids, said Jonathan Ziomek, Medill’s director of graduate editorial programs. The Medill News Service and the School of Continuing Studies are moving to the Loop from near NU’s Chicago campus.
Ziomek said IT attempted to charge the two schools $2,400 a month in addition to installation costs, while private companies had estimated the job would cost between $400 and $900.
“It was just astronomical,” Trossman said. “We all gasped. We thought, ‘We’re all the same family. How could the price be so high?'”
Medill administrators sent a memo to Provost Lawrence Dumas asking if the school could use a private contractor instead of IT, but the university rejected the request. After Medill administrators met with IT officials, however, the university agreed to absorb about $250,000 in administrative costs, bringing the price in line with the private bids.
The university’s phone service company, originally called Northwestern Technologies Group, began as a joint venture between the university and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
But last year the hospital and the Medical Faculty Foundation decided to use Ameritech instead of NTG, reducing NTG’s phone customers by about 35 percent.
When the hospital ended the partnership, the university abandoned NTG and replaced it with IT.
IT Vice President Mort Rahimi said he then created an advisory committee to review the service and make sure it charged market rates.
“We are an internal monopoly,” Rahimi said. “Every year we simply ask the question of, ‘Should we maintain these services?’ If in fact we find something wrong, we’ll fix it.”
Some members of the advisory committee said they will take a careful look at whether the university should even continue to use IT’s phone and Internet service.
“If it is indeed the case that NUIT can’t provide services competitively, then they may have served their purpose and it may be time to move on to other arrangements,” said committee member Jeff Miller, the senior executive associate dean of NU’s Medical School. “It’s not our core business. It’s entirely appropriate to look and see if someone else can do this better.”
Though IT initially saved the university money by cutting long-distance phone costs, Miller said, intense competition among private phone carriers has driven prices down to a point where they might be cheaper than the university service. Miller, however, said he has not yet determined whether NU’s service is the best option.
Colleges across the country have chosen private companies instead of in-house services to cash in on cheaper rates and less administrative work, said AT&T spokesman Paul LaPlante.
AT&T even has a special department to provide phone and Internet service to universities, he said.
“We provide the service from start to finish,” LaPlante said. “It’s easier for a university to hand their telecom off to someone than to set up their own.”
But IT Vice President Rahimi said the university has no plans to contract with a private phone company.
“To say we’re not going to be competitive, I don’t know what that means at all,” he said. “That’s like saying Kellogg is not going to be competitive with Timbuktu University.”
IT officials said the benefits of uniting the university’s departments on a single computer network outweigh the higher costs of the in-house service.
“From a communications standpoint, Medill will be in a really good situation,” said David Carr, IT’s director of telecommunications and network services. “There’s a great value in the network. The university has done a really good job in putting these relationships into place.”
Other NU departments have tried to cut corners by installing cheaper Internet service, he said, but they have been plagued by slowdowns and computer failures.
Medill Prof. Ziomek said bringing in an outside phone company might not be the best solution.
Though IT would be forced to lower prices if it had to bid against private companies, it would disrupt any benefits of a uniform campus computer network, he said.
“It’s not a crazy thought that you’ve got to stay with one vendor,” he said. “The question is: Should NUIT bid against companies? If you do that, you’re letting your left arm go against your right arm.”
