Printing Charges

Overview

You can use your RCS account to print from computers connected to RPI's network.  When you do so, your account or department will automatically be charged for the cost of printing.  The fees for using the RCS printers have been set in order to recover the cost of maintenance and supplies.  The charges depend upon print quality, paper quality, and color/gray, as shown below.

Students will have these charges applied directly to their accounts.

Faculty and Staff members will have these charges applied to their respective departments.  Note that PaperCut will incorrectly state that these charges are applied to a Faculty or Staff member's user account; this confusion is an unavoidable side-effect of RPI’s billing system.

At the start of each semester, each person receives a free allocation for black & white printing.  This allocation is $12.50 for Fall, Spring, and Summer.  This allocation is reset at the beginning of each new semester after the first time you print each semester; any portion of this allocation that you do not spend on printing is not carried over to the next semester.  After this allocation is used up, printing charges are added to your (or your department's) Bursar bill from Rensselaer.

Please note that the free printing allocation is for black and white printing only.  All specialized printing, including color printing and plotting, is charged to the user's account.  There is no allocation for specialized printing.

Note: If you print to a color printer you will be charged color prices, regardless of whether you instruct your computer to print the output as grayscale instead of color.

Refer to link in References for printers sorted by type to determine if printer is color capable.

Also note that printing charges will not appear on your Bursar bill until the amount is more than $5.00.  This means that charges might not appear until the following semester.

Details

Black & White Printing

The charge per page varies according to the type of printer and its output.  Note that you are not charged for header pages, as the per job charge imposed on printers that use header pages is intended to partially recover the cost of these pages.

Note: If you print to a color printer you will be charged color prices, regardless of whether you instruct your computer to print the output as grayscale instead of color.

Color Printing

The charge per page varies according to the type of printer and its output.  Note that you are not charged for header pages, as the per job charge imposed on printers that use header pages is intended to partially recover the cost of these pages.

The per-job charge does not apply to self-service color printers that do not have header pages.

Note: Charges for color printing are charged to your Bursar bill from Rensselaer.

Note: If you print to a color printer you will be charged color prices, regardless of whether you instruct your computer to print the output as grayscale instead of color.

Plotting

The charge per foot varies according to the type of printer and its output.

Note: Plotting charges are charged to your Bursar bill from Rensselaer.

References

Printers sorted by Type (determine if color capable)

Last Reviewed: 22-Dec-2024