With over half of Harvard's current $4 million computer budget paid for by the federal government, fluctuations in federal research spending could severally affect the Computing Center's budget. Under current accounting procedures, "the University is taking all the risk," Leahy said.

In future negotiations with federal auditors, Harvard will urge the government to pay for a fixed percentage of any one computer's costs in exchange for a fixed percentage of the computer's capacity. Under this forward contracting scheme, the government's share would be based on the computer's use by federally sponsored researchers.

The University would then pay for the remaining block of computing services. But within that block, the Computing Center could establish different rates for different users, with students probably receiving the lowest rate schedule.

"What we would like to do is make batch processing free to all students just as the House consoles are now," Leahy said.

Paying for a percentage of a computer's capacity, as opposed to paying an hourly rate for processing a specific job, would encourage any one customer to use as much of his quota as possible. Since a computer's expenses are relatively fixed no matter how much use is made of the machine, the average charge for any particular job would drop as use increased, Leahy said.

Computers that now stand idle for several hours a day would tend to be utilized more.

However, the Bureau of the Budget has insisted in the past that government-sponsored projects be charged no more for a computer service than any other user.

The Harvard proposal may not meet BOB's requirements.