Printing at UIC: Updates, Improvements, and What’s Ahead
Introduction
UIC’s campus-wide student printing service continues to play a vital role in supporting students academic needs. With nearly 300,000 print jobs processed in the 2024–25 academic year, our network of print stations — spread across the east, west, and south campuses, UIC Law, and Rockford — remains a dependable resource for academic and professional needs.
Wepa is the university-wide print solution that enables students to send print jobs from their laptop or phone, from a computer lab, or via the web, and print at any Wepa print station.
Improved Service Through Smarter Management
This year’s contract negotiations reflect our continued focus on delivering cost-effective, high-quality printing services that meet student needs across campus. Every decision we’ve made is designed to improve affordability, reliability, and access to resources when and where you need them.
- No increase in student printing costs – Your printing rates will remain the same, so you can plan your budget without worrying about unexpected price hikes.
- Lowered expenses – By taking maintenance in-house, we’ve significantly reduced leasing costs, freeing up funds to reinvest in other student services.
- Reliable paper and consumable supplies – Consistent provisioning ensures that when you approach a station, you’ll find it ready for use with the materials you need.
- 5.13% increase in overall station uptime – Since UIC took over station maintenance in January 2025, our in-house team has been able to respond more quickly to technical issues, keeping machines available longer and reducing downtime.
- Streamlined operations – We are removing approximately 20 low-usage stations and relocating several others to areas of higher demand. This ensures responsible use of university resources while maintaining easy access to printing in the places students need it most.
Q1
Printing at UIC is still a core service that students depend on and we’re doing everything possible to be good stewards of the service so students get the best, most reliable printing experience possible. We are grateful to our partners in the various units and departments who have helped us make the best decisions possible to make printing as accessible going forward.
| Tech Helpdesk Supervisor, Technology Solutions
A Shift in Overall Printing Volume
Since 2019, UIC’s overall student printing volume has dropped by over half (about 63%). This sharp decline reflects the shift toward digital workflows, particularly around course materials, along with increased use of mobile/cloud access.
In 2019, the total number of print jobs was 851,530 and the total pages printed were nearly 5 million. In 2024, those numbers dropped to approximately 310,000 print jobs and 1.8 million pages.
Aside from the sustainability benefits of such a drop in printing, this also has led to the Tech Solutions print quota, provided to all students each semester, covering over 94% of printing expense, meaning less money spent by our students to meet their academic needs. Dragon Dollar$ printing represented just 0.6% of printing in 2024!
UIC Print Volume Bar Chart
UIC Print Volume Bar Chart (2019 vs 2024)
Changing Printing Habits
Student printing preferences have evolved significantly since 2019.
Prior to the pandemic, over 50% of printing came from computer labs and students’ personal laptops, while less than 2% came from students’ mobile phones. Now, that ratio has completely flipped with computer labs and personal laptops accounting for less than 4% of printing and mobile phones being used for nearly 44% of all printing. The other top printing methods are:
- Printing at a station via Google Drive, which has remained steady since 2019 at 24%
- Web uploads via Wepa’s website have nearly doubled their share, now at 19% of jobs.
These shifts highlight how important the mobile-first approach of Wepa printing is for enabling our students to succeed.
Changing Printing Habits
Printing by Source Bar Chart (2019 vs 2024)
What’s Changing for Fall 2025
Looking ahead to the Fall 2025 semester, Technology Solutions is refining its printing support model:
- Support for replenishing paper and consumables will start with local staff to ensure stations always have the supplies they need
- Technology Solutions will handle advanced repairs (if you encounter a problem, just reach out at it.uic.edu/report-a-problem)
- The size and distribution of the Wepa fleet is being optimized based on current printing trends, reducing the total number of stations while ensuring high-demand areas remain well-served and a printing station is never far away. Units also have the option to take on the lease cost to maintain stations in areas that have historically seen low total traffic but better meet their students’ needs.
UIC is Recognized for Paper Consumption Offset
In addition to becoming more environmentally friendly through the reduction of printing jobs, UIC has received a Lifetime Certificate recognizing the university’s reforestation efforts in collaboration with PrintReleaf.
PrintReleaf has certified that UIC has offset the equivalent of 9,509,783 total standard sheets of paper consumption by reforesting 1,141 standard trees since joining PrintReleaf in August of 2018.
UIC’s reforestation impact includes 500+ trees in Madagascar, 150+ trees in Tanzania, and over 400 trees in the Dominican Republic, Romania, France, Mexico and Northern Ireland.
PrintReleaf is the industry leader in automated environmental offsets, enabling organizations to offset environmental impact through certified reforestation and carbon offset projects.
Printing Smarter at UIC
UIC’s printing network is adapting to meet the needs of a mobile-first campus while keeping costs low and uptime high. Whether you’re printing from your phone, laptop, or the cloud, our goal is to make the process quick, reliable, and accessible.
For detailed instructions on mobile, cloud, and web printing, visit the UIC Printing Services page.