Students returning to De Anza College this quarter might have noticed that most, if not all, of their classes no longer have a materials fee associated with them.

The Foothill-De Anza District is no longer allowed to collect material fees for printouts, because of an audit finding a lack of a paper trail equating the amount a student pays to the materials students received.

Previously, the materials fee for most classes went mostly to printouts such as syllabi, handouts, exams, and quizzes.

The change does not affect classes that require special equipment and materials,  including online resources, as long as the class fee adheres to the Education Code 76365, which states:

1. The materials must have continuing value and be required to meet specific objectives of the course.

2. Materials must not be solely exclusively available from the district.

3. There is a health or safety reason that the district if providing the material, or that district can provide it cheaper than any other source.

4. The fees that are collected during a particular quarter must be spent to benefit the students who pay the fee. The district cannot have a profit from materials fees.

According to Letha Jeanpierre, vice president of finance and educational resources, worksheets and handouts are now being packaged together into class-specific handouts that are sold at the De Anza Bookstore or posted online. Jeanpierre said students should make use of the ePrint systems throughout the campus as well as printing at home and using the Catalyst online course management system.

Although the change has been implemented campus-wide, she said she left it to the deans of the various divisions to figure out how they will deal with the change. To ease the transition, each division’s discretionary funds (known as the B-budget) have been supplemented.

The Language Arts division, for example, has an approximate limit of 20 pages per student per section, according to Thomas Ray, dean of the division.