Faculty and staff PD funds – guidance on Adobe product licensing fees

A notice that UBC professional development funds cannot be used for Adobe software renewal.

UBC IT has recently announced a new license subscription renewal process for Adobe software – all current subscribers were notified directly by UBC IT with the full details. This new process involves a cost recovery model for Adobe software licensing fees, including Adobe Acrobat Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud, where individual users and units will now be responsible for paying the annual subscription fee if they would like to continue using these products.

With this new change, we have identified a need to clarify that UBC professional development funds cannot be used toward the Adobe product licensing costs.

Adobe products are considered essential operational software for staff and faculty to fulfill their core duties, and therefore these licensing costs should be covered by departmental budgets or by other means at the university, rather than by the UBC Staff Professional Development Funds or by the UBC Faculty Professional Development Funds, which are intended for professional development purposes only.

• To clarify, this means that the Adobe Acrobat Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud annual cost recovery fees required by UBC IT are not eligible PD Fund expenses for staff and faculty and cannot be claimed for reimbursement.
• Furthermore, during UBC IT’s Adobe subscription payment process, staff and faculty should not provide a UBC Staff PD Fund or UBC Faculty PD Fund related worktag code and cost center number.

While UBC IT recognizes the use of Adobe products are used widely by staff and faculty for their duties, many of these needs can potentially be met through free alternative tools. They encourage faculty and staff  to assess their needs using the Adobe product feature comparison and alternatives charts before deciding on requesting a paid subscription.

Questions?

If you have a question specific to this announcement, please contact Susanna Mulligan in Central HR at susanna.mulligan@ubc.ca.

For general PD Fund inquiries, please review the PD Funds webpages or contact our PD Fund team in Central HR at pd.funds@ubc.ca (for staff) or faculty.pd@ubc.ca (for faculty).