Contrary to earlier fears, colleges and universities nationwide likely won’t be forced to spend millions of dollars redesigning their computer networks to help the federal government monitor e-mail traffic for terrorist activity.
Instead, a June court ruling suggests the most those institutions will need to spend under the new federal requirement is $30,000 to $100,000 to modify equipment that connects their campus networks to the Internet – and they may not have to spend even that, depending on certain conditions, higher education experts said.