College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts: Start Of New Trend?
Officials at Boston College have made what may be a momentous decision: they've stopped doling out new email accounts to incoming students. The officials realized that the students already had established digital identities by the time they entered college, so the new email addresses were just not being utilized. The college will offer forwarding services instead.
Starting next year, freshman enrolled at Boston College won't be given an actual email account complete with login and inbox, just an email address. This address, in the format of johnsmith@bc.edu will simply forward mail to the student's already established inbox, be it Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, or whatever else they may be using.
The college reached this decision after first looking into outsourcing their email to the cloud. They considered offering from both Google and Microsoft, but eventually decided against both in lieu of the new forwarding option.
A Smart Decision
While the Boston College decision may have been made for cost-saving reasons more than anything, we can easily imagine this as being the start of a new trend.
Can you even imagine a U.S. college student who didn't have an email address of their own by the time they were a freshman? It's practically unheard of. Today's students are digital natives who have been immersed in technology from the day they were born. It simply doesn't make sense to give them yet another account to manage when they enter college.
Some Challenges
By going this route, there are still some challenges to overcome, though. For example, a student who changes their email carrier will probably forget to alert the institution to the change and could then miss out on important messages from the university pertaining to their courses, scholarship, and disciplinary and/or safety information.
However, it can easily be argued that a change of (email) address is a student's responsibility to handle, not the institution's. If a student changed their address or phone number, would they not alert the affected parties? The same should hold true for email. And if the end result is more efficient and effective communication with the student body as a whole, the outliers who didn't follow through on managing their email transition are ultimately the ones at fault for any missed messages.
The only danger in drawing a hard line like that would be if the college or university was in the habit of sending out critical safety information utilizing the students' email addresses. If that was the institution's main way of communicating this urgent info, they may want to devise another solution. Urgent messages should ideally be sent out using multiple pathways: email, IM, text messages, and, these days, Twitter alerts would also be a valuable tool to use, too. In fact, Omnilert's e2Campus emergency notification system already integrates with Twitter and Facebook as well as email, SMS, and RSS.
In the end, we think the decision Boston College made could easily be the start of a new trend, especially for smaller institutions looking to reduce I.T. infrastructure and support costs. We're sure the students like it, too.
Comments
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As a college student with an email address I hardly use I can understand the reasoning behind the decision. Our college killed hosting the email and went to gmail and while it offers options to collaborate its more than likely under used.
Posted by: BCK | November 20, 2008 9:14 AM
Neat: "Starting next year, freshman enrolled at Boston College won't be given an actual email account complete with login and inbox, just an email address. This address, in the format of johnsmith@bc.edu will simply forward mail to the student's already established inbox, be it Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, or whatever else they may be using."
Posted by: Daniel J. Pritchett
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November 20, 2008 9:14 AM
Nice move for taming the email usage but on the other hand a secret agenda would be collecting email addresses :)
Posted by: Yunus Tunak
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November 20, 2008 9:19 AM
Excellent move. And, yeah some students might change their email... and yeah, email might contain vital safety information. It's STILL the student's responsibility to update the college. All of the other methods you list can also be altered or canceled as well. I can't think of one contact method that can't be changed. In fact, BC's move probably increases the number of messages that get through. After all, if a student doesn't actually look at their college email address...
Posted by: rick | November 20, 2008 9:25 AM
Good idea. Here's a problem it avoids. Software in use on campus assumes that Stu Dent's email is stu.dent@readwriteu.edu.
Stu knows that he's really kewlstewie@somewhereelse.com
Prof uses said software to communicate with Stu, Stu never gets emails, etc.
Posted by: Andrew | November 20, 2008 9:30 AM
Makes perfect sense to me, I know I personally only use my university email to forward to my gmail. It can respond back from the original address if necessary, has a better interface, and with gmail's tagging is the best of every world.
Posted by: Joshua Rivera | November 20, 2008 9:35 AM
Zzzz. Who cares?
Posted by: Mike McCurdy | November 20, 2008 9:39 AM
I think this makes a lot of sense. There may be some scenarios, though, where this strategy may not work. For example, if the college has other internal applications that integrate with email then they would need to figure out a way federate the identity of the external email system with internal apps.
Then again, if the internal apps forward through the forwarding email address that should probably cover a lot of the cases.
Posted by: kayvaan | November 20, 2008 9:46 AM
This is a very smart move, and hopefully it's just a first step towards colleges utilizing the many free resources that are available. I work at a university, and my department has been using Google Docs and other online resources for almost every project we've worked on. We could use the university's document sharing services, but the IT department is already overworked and we'd just be wasting taxpayer money unnecessarily.
Posted by: Marcello | November 20, 2008 9:52 AM
This is dangerous.
Yes. Students don't always check their email, but when the cost of hosting and server space is practically zero?
Not to mention, a .edu email helps students communicate with important sources. By forcing them to use a gmail or ymail account, you may be relegating their emails to the spam pile.
Also: Since Virginia Tech, colleges have spent a tremendous amount of money on alerts and notifications to students. The argument that getting rid of the .edu email may not be so cost effective when you consider the time and money needed to maintain an ever changing database of student contact information.
Posted by: Brandon J. Mendelson | November 20, 2008 10:23 AM
This isn't the greatest idea. There are issues with privacy and security. The email communications in a school might not be as sensitive as in a company. But it's not the best idea to have emails related to school stuff sitting on Google/MS's servers.
What are the IT people in Boston College thinking?
Posted by: NOT A GOOD IDEA | November 20, 2008 11:11 AM
This is interesting. If I'm not mistaken, I think there are companies that use the college email address as a method of proof that someone qualifies for a student discount. I want to say that Microsoft does this with their Office discounts.
Posted by: Anne H | November 20, 2008 12:49 PM
I think one of the overlooked factors is that most students coming into university have unprofessional emails, like "kewlbecky" above. What a college account forces you to do is have an account like rlthorman@wisc.edu, which is what I had. I get that they're forwarding, so during college it still looks like rlthorman@wisc.edu, but then after college you're still stuck with kewlbecky. Hopefully after the students graduate, they'll use the more professional username that the college gives them,like rlthorman@domain.com or something similar instead of continuing with their original accounts. That's part of growing up..
Posted by: Rebecca | November 20, 2008 1:14 PM
The amazing decisions isn't that they're forwarding; that's not like it's something new, or at least not at sane colleges.
Besides, for those safety concerns, it makes people _more_ safe because it sends messages to accounts they actually check.
Posted by: Moxie | November 20, 2008 1:52 PM
Wow! Not a big fan of it...don't really like it a whole lot. It seems very suspicious to me personally. For me, I would not want to have any of my personal information related to a pre-professional company, be it a school or other institution. On the other hand, some people don't care and don't mind. I think that they should at least give them an option. The other thing is that I think that such an institution, just like a professional company, should provide the student, or employee, with all of the necessary tools to finish a job well. I do not think that it is wise for them to assume that students want to use their personal resources, if they even have the resources, to get the job done. I think that it is the responsibility of the institution to equip the personnel.
Besides, server space these days is not expensive at all...especially compared to how much they probably make a year.
Posted by: jblaha | November 20, 2008 4:53 PM
This is expected. Gmail has the ninja theme which is way more fun! haha!
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Posted by: Yasser | November 21, 2008 2:32 AM
You ask, "Can you even imagine a U.S. college student who didn't have an email address of their own by the time they were a freshman?". Yes, I can. I have two such kids. First, they got email addresses from their high school. Accounts get closed upon graduation. Second, they don't particularly like to use email, just use it for school business. They prefer to do all their messaging on FB and cell phones.
Posted by: Mark | November 21, 2008 11:09 AM
This has happened at my (private) university as well: Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (20k students) has announced the email system will be taken offline next January.
Posted by: Duane Johnson | November 21, 2008 11:15 AM
I have to agree with Anne H on her point about alternative uses for .edu email addresses (if, in fact, colleges don't want outgoing mail sent from the .edu domain). These email addresses are more than just receivers of information, they are also symbols of an individual's status. It is an instant verification of someone's standing as a college student. There are myriad bars, restaurants, clothing stores, movie theatres, etc. that offer discounts for students. The offline verification is a Student ID; the online verification is a .edu email address.
From a cost-saving standpoint, however, this does make sense. Most students will think nothing of it (is privacy really a concern for this generation?... half our lives it seems are stored in a server somewhere).
It will be interesting to see if more colleges follow suit.
Peter Simones
www.Cramster.com
Posted by: Peter Simones | November 21, 2008 1:12 PM
As a college student myself, I'd like it if my college decided to implement this. As of now they only provide an Outlook Web Access email account, forgoing offering details on the exchange server for offline access. This would be a step up, as I'd be able to either setup an additional Gmail account to handle the mail or setup a filter in my current one.
It is true, as Rebecca said earlier, that some students don't have appropriate email addresses. Mine isn't professional looking at all, having chosen it while still in middle school. Having a masked address would remedy this issue in handling professional matters, and would also still allow myself access to educational deals on the internet, such as the popular Ultimate Steal deal that Microsoft annually offers.
Posted by: Adduc | November 22, 2008 5:35 AM
work at a university, and my department has been using Google Docs and other online resources for almost every project we've worked on. We could use the university's document sharing services
Posted by: makale | November 24, 2008 3:43 AM
My university gave students the option of keeping their email address even after graduating, which I decided to enroll in. When I was in school, the university used our school email addresses to communicate and alert students whenever needed. The down side of still using my school's email address is that the storage space is very limited, which is why I now forward everything to my gmail account. It will be interesting to see how things progress.
Posted by: Marie Goltara | November 24, 2008 8:53 AM
The issue of FERPA must be addressed, but I assume it can.
To summarize, academic records must be kept confidential. So if a grade is emailed to a student and this is kept on a third party's servers, what assurance is that the grade will be kept confidential by that party?
Posted by: zvi kedem | November 24, 2008 3:39 PM
One problem that I have encountered is the university's servers not forwarding ALL the mail it receives. University IT depts tend to do a (poor) spam check which many times weeds out legitimate mail (ie. if there was too many recipients).
Posted by: bwl | November 25, 2008 1:44 PM
muje ak naya E-mail chaye
Posted by: K.Naresh | December 3, 2008 7:02 PM
MUJE AK NAYA E-MAIL CHAYE!
Posted by: K.Naresh | December 3, 2008 7:03 PM