Why do universities charge for transcripts?
Lets grant that universities have a vested interest in charging for things. Revenue is helpful for an institution. But it always interested in how people determine how much something costs. Its just a piece of paper, right? Students have incentives to fake transcripts. Transcripts are printed on high end paper with complex designs to prevent forgeries. Someone had to design it. Design costs money. Transcripts are often mailed in envelopes. You either need a lot of people to stuff envelopes, or machines to do it. Either costs money. Transcript data has to be pulled from a student information management system. Software costs money. One, Banner, is only sold on ongoing subscription basis, so its not a one time cost for the institution (Banner by Ellucian Pricing). You have people who have to handle requests, complaints, look into whether professors gave correct grades, and miscellaneous tasks to ensure the accuracy of transcripts before they are printed. That is, an office of the registrar. Staff costs money. You have to worry about archiving to ensure those records are available in perpetuity. Warehousing for paper documents costs money. Hard drive back-ups costs money. Now scale all that that to potentially tens of thousands of current and past students. Could all of this be paid for from other revenue streams? Sure. But it seems that making a transcript costs more than next to nothing. Old story: Rich person commissions artist to paint a crane. Gives artist a month. Rich person visits artist to pick up painting. Artist says, Ah, yes, one moment, and draw the crane in a few minutes while the patron looks on. Patron explodes. Why did I pay you all that money for something you did in a few second?! Artist goes to drawer and pulls out reams and reams of badly-drawn cranes. And the moral of the story is: Youre not just paying for the one thing. Youre paying for the experience and process that led up to it.