Cost recovery isn’t something that all schools consider necessary. To those that do, it can mean a number of things. Some institutions try to recover 100% of their investment in certain products, or even turn a small profit. Other schools only want to allay licensing costs by recouping a small portion of them. Costs can be recovered by charging students and faculty for access to resources in a point-of-sale manner or through other means, such as being built into student fees. Simply put, cost recovery is merely a means of improving ROI and providing more flexibility to schools that need it.