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  I work at an institution similar to University of Wisconsin-Madison although we have about 1,000 fewer students.

  Why is it costing $300,000 for a major university? The salaries and benefits of two new positions that were added at our school to deal with SEVIS, temporary staff were hired to get everyone into the system to meet the deadline, not to mention the cost of the IT support that was diverted from other University business to focus on SEVIS implementation. Any school with more than 300 students really must have a third-party computer program that interprets information from the registrar's systems for the SEVIS system in order to maintain our level of compliance. That was around $26,000. After more than 1000 student records at the University of Kansas were hacked into, and due to the volume of information that SEVIS requires, a separate and dedicated server was required, also at a cost of around $25,000 with yearly maintenence costs of around $3,000. So you can see how those costs begin to add up.

  More frustrating however, is that while Universities are being told in no uncertain terms that we must meet the Aug. 1st deadline 'or else', (and we have always been willing to do our part to comply, regardless of the problems involved) more than half of the US Ports of Entry do not have access to the system. That means that since the implementation of this 'secure' system, there is now NO approved mechanism for letting a school know that someone entered the US on our document if they enter through a US Port of Entry that is not able to access SEVIS. It's the double standard that is frustrating for us...especially when the DHS sends out an announcement (later recalled) that suggested university officials work nights and weekends to enter data becuase the system is easily overburdened from the volume of users. All we want is a little fair play!

  GovExec.com reader Posted July 25, 2003 1:32 PM
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  Higher education administrators dismiss concerns about abuse of student visas "almost without comment"? They claim that "only two" of the 9-11 terrorists were here on student visas? Let's see - that's more than 15 percent, and 15 percent of the 3000 plus people murdered or injured is 450. Let's ask the families and friends of those 450 people whether colleges and universities finally being forced to do their jobs with respect to student visas is worthwhile, why don't we?

  Student visas are a privilege, not a right, and institutions of higher learning supported primarily by this nation's taxpayers and charitable donors out to be happy to be ensuring that their students are here to learn, not blow up planes.

  And how can it cost $300,000 per year to enter and maintain data on a few hundred students? The information involved is information that the school maintains already: name, address, major, disciplinary history. Why so expenseive?

  Margaret Manning Posted July 22, 2003 7:25 PM