University budget now available via Internet

Penn State is one of few universities to offer its budget on the World Wide Web.

The Bryce Jordan Center's budget. The cost of the University's fire insurance.

This information has been available to the public for about a decade, but starting Friday, anyone who wants to see how much the University spends on instructor salaries does not have to trudge through more than 500 pages of paper.

They can access it through the World Wide Web for free, using the Adobe Acrobat reader , at the University's home page -- http://www.psu.edu. The budget has previously only been available at University libraries, said Christy Rambeau, University news bureau manager.

"Penn State is one of the few universities to make its budget so widely available," she said. "This just enables more people to access information about the University in an easier, more cost-effective way."

Rambeau added that University officials wanted to get the budget posted before the state budget hearings, which begin today.

A goal of this project, she said, is to have more people aware of University expenses. She also hopes alumni, parents, media and business associates will access the budget on the Web, she added.

"We've got a lot of people who will use it," Rambeau said.

Not only will users benefit with a greater awareness of the University budget and expenditures, but University officials said the University itself will also benefit -- it will no longer have to make photocopies of the budget, which had cost about $100 for one complete replication.

"We really haven't had the budget to do that," Rambeau said.

The information was already on a computer, said Stephen MacCarthy, executive director of University relations, but it was just a matter of putting the information on the Internet.

"So it's really just a matter of laying it out and making it accessible," he said.

But the budget's easy access takes a minute or two to get used to, Rambeau said.

"You do need specific software to download (the budget), but that is provided, as well," she said.

The use of technology is in the refining stages, MacCarthy said, adding that the information is still the same as the huge volume of paper previously used, although some of the pie charts may not be available because of scanning difficulties.

"It's exactly the same budget I have in my office," Rambeau said.