A new delivery system for University departmental mail will save money while providing more jobs for students, University Mail Services officials said yesterday.

Effective this month, all departmental mail to students will be handled by University Mail Services. In the past, letters to students were sent through the U.S. Post Office.

This plan should save the University "a lot of money," according to Mail Services Manager Ursula Moore.

Instead of spending 29 cents to send each letter first class, departments can now send letters through University Mail at a cost of 12 cents per letter--even less, if departments sort the mail by houses themselves, Moore said.

In addition to saving the University money, this system will create more student jobs, Moore said. She said that more mail will be delivered by Mail Service carriers, many of whom are students.

The Mail Service is already a "primary employer" of Harvard undergraduates, Moore said. More than 50 students deliver mail.

Moore said one of the program's strengths is its labor pool. "We're very efficient because we use students," she said. "They're smart, they walk fast, and they know where things are."

Kirkland House Superintendent Kevin Higgins said the new system may create more volume by prompting people who would otherwise personally deliver correspondence to mail it. But Moore said the new service is for official correspondence only and cannot be used by students for personal mail.

"This might increase the amount of mail we get," he said. "Other than that it shouldn't affect us much."

Until five years ago, student mail boxes were considered government property and only U.S. postal workers were allowed to open them. Construction began on House and Science Center mailrooms when the Post Office announced it could no longer afford to stuff individual boxes.

The new delivery system became possible when Harvard opened a mailroom for first-years in the Science Center last fall. Now that all students get their mail at one of Harvard's mailrooms, Mail Services can make bulk deliveries.

Moore said the Science Center mailroom was the last to open. "Someone should have broken a bottle of champagne or something on that when it opened," she said