The Future of Student Computer Labs

Student computer labs have been a fixture of college and university campuses since the broad adoption of the personal computer over two decades ago. The technology and teaching landscape has changed greatly since then. Laptops, mobile devices, virtualization, cloud services, social media, and collaborative technologies all now call into question whether this service model continues to make sense. Some schools have already announced the phaseout of their student computing spaces. The University of New Hampshire is undergoing a yearlong review of our student computer clusters. We will share our process and conclusions.