Communications Technologies and Universities : No More Office Phones?

Here's an amusing article tying together budget cuts at universities and new technologies; the communications department at UW is cutting costs by getting rid of phones. Students who want to meet professors will have to e-mail them or find them.

I admit I would be loathe to give up my office phone. If only to save my fingers from potential RSI (I haven't been cursed yet), I think using a phone instead of e-mail is a good idea in many situations. And there's no way I'd give students (or even many staff people) my cell phone number. On the other hand, I must admit my office phone is not a highly used device, and students in particular almost never reach me by phone. Indeed, these days a number of the calls on the office phone are solicitors -- this has only really started happening in the past year or two, and I wonder if Harvard's phones were somehow off the grid of phone solicitors way back when or if there's been some other change. So while there's irony in a communications department getting rid of phones, I can see where the cost-benefit analysis might suggest it's the right thing to do.