Kennesaw State announced on March 8 that the university would no longer provide students with personal Adobe Creative Cloud licenses and access to Adobe platforms would be solely accessible through student computer labs, effective July 1.
According to Jeff Delaney, vice president of IT and chief information officer, the university was only able to pay for personal licenses for students through a COVID relief fund, which has run out. The sole reason he provided for this cut was budget concerns.
“The cost to provide each student with personal access to the Adobe Creative Cloud is $585,000,” Delaney said. “Since the COVID relief funds expired and in person classes have resumed, the decision was made to revert back to providing students with access to the Adobe Creative Cloud through the on-campus computer labs.”
According to Delaney, an institutional license costs $145,000. If students want a license to access the Creative Cloud through their personal devices, Delaney advised that students may save 60% through Adobe by purchasing a month-to-month plan for $19.99 per month. Students may also access the platform at home through Virtual Owl, a “virtual desktop is a simulated user interface with a collection of software programs that is located on a remote computer.”
There are 435 computer labs across the Kennesaw and Marietta campuses, totaling 4,300 computers.
On March 21, KSU student Amelia Barnett responded with a change.org petition demanding that KSU to continue funding student Adobe licenses. The petition cited the additional cost it would take students to complete required coursework was unfair and that there would not be ample computers to support the number of students needed access. As of March 27, the petition has collected over 1,800 signatures.
“It’s ironic that KSU and Adobe partnered through their Creative Jam this year, touting the support of students with low income and those who are homelessness, yet they expect these same students to pay $240/yr on the software they’re trying to promote.” said one signer, identified online as Dean Lambros.
Michael Noland was another signer that identified himself as a parent of a KSU student.
“When she began KSU this was a huge selling point not only to her as a student but to me as a parent. Productivity in todays environment is critical to success, and removing remote access to Adobe is an impediment to my child’s academic and personal achievements. Please reconsider your decision.” Nolan said.
For many communications, journalism and art professors, these Adobe licenses are an integral part of their course curriculum. Professor Ian Dunham teaches Entertainment Podcasting and Digital Media Production. To Dunham, teaching students through Adobe platforms is important because of “an industry-related pressure to learn Adobe software.”
Following this announcement, he realized that to continue producing the content in his Digital Media Production course, students must purchase their own licenses through Adobe. As for Entertainment Podcasting, he said he may switch to a cheaper audio workstation for students to access.
“Many people assume that losing Adobe Creative Cloud only pertains to humanities and art students. When in fact it affects the broader KSU community,” Sarah Johnson, Senior Lecturer of Communication, said. “A large number of KSU’s Adobe users are from computer science, architecture, business and education majors.”
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