socialmedian: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts: Start Of New Trend?

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College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts: Start Of New Trend?

Source: ReadWriteWeb

1 day ago

Summary

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.

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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 eas

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Comments (35)

Kara,

1 day ago

Interesting. I know here at my school many professors do not see your questions/concerns through email as legit unless they are sent through a school source (school e-mail); they are afraid they are spam. Most young kids create immature and embarrassing e-mail names ("stud", "hot", "baby"). In this case, they (probably) will create a new one when they start college if the school doesn't give them one. I know Google runs our school e-mail now and it great. I just can't imagine eliminating the school e-mail addresses altogether verification reasons.

Sina,

1 day ago

I recall this issue from my time at the university. Students were using their gmail and hotmail accounts, and simply neglected their university e-mail accounts because of the poor web interface we were using, and the amount of incoming spam thru the system. I also noticed that all student accounts were spammed from legit university accounts. So yeah, this is a good idea - but the personal e-mail has to be approved via some authorization system. @Kara are your current accounts @university.edu or @gmail.com with the Google system?

Kara,

1 day ago

@Sina They are @umail.iu.edu. You can still use the previous one (@indiana.edu); the mail is just forwarded to the new one. Works great and you get the advantages of verified e-mails for profs and also the gmail features.

Outflewtheweb,

23 hours ago

I think it's a good move. I hated that when I was in college, I always had to log in and check my school mail (their POP was so unreliable, but then again, this was the 90s/early 2000s) when I'd rather be using my main account.

Joebachana,

22 hours ago

Kara does bring up a sub-concept in her post. We get a lot of resumes emailed to us for job postings our company places on different job boards -- many college ones. Frankly, the unprofessional email names are passed over more quickly than the professional ones. Kids getting out of college should minimally keep an innocuous email account, ideally from their school domain as a minor proof that they are affiliated with the institution on their resume (transcripts should still be on hand)

Sumanth,

22 hours ago

Nice move. If it spreads to other colleges, gmail and others have a new task to give a portion of their mail boxes just for college purposes.

Sina,

22 hours ago

@sumanth I wonder how much Google would gain on such deal. And just imagine universities abroad that are willing to run Google. Wow!

Kara,

21 hours ago

I must correct myself and say it's not "@gmail". It's called "umail". But it's basically just gmail with a different name; or that's the way I see it.

Josh Miller,

14 hours ago

Good idea. I never used my College email account and heard complaints that they were full of nothing but spam anyway.

Also, how are people supposed to register on Facebook's groups now? Don't the college groups require verification from a college account?

Udi,

14 hours ago

the move makes sense for the institution and the students. my first university created an account for me without giving me permission to forward mail. i already had an account and it was a hassle to check my uni address just in case. i imagine that in the future, we may all be assigned an address at birth in the same way that tax file/social security/id numbers are assigned in some countries today. that may make life easier. of course if we don't use email anymore maybe some sort of cyber-id that can generate an automatic presence in any system such as facebook, utterli, twitter or whatever

Josh Miller,

13 hours ago

@Udi Cyber ID at birth. In the future, people will chose first name, middle name and "Online handle/Gamertag" of their newborns.

Sumanth,

12 hours ago

@Sina what i meant is google might need to categorize the mails related to college mails , may be only for students. But I think there wont be any deals from colleges to these mail services.
Using groups might be a good idea for colleges.

Groomsy,

12 hours ago

This is definitely an interesting move. If they are just tired of dealing with their own servers, then I definitely think they should work with a provider (as some have said, Google can do this with GMail) to at least give a uniform email experience for the students and professors. I know at my school, you generally will not get a response from an email address outside of the school domain (gets spammed instantly).

Josh Miller,

11 hours ago

Google has spectacular spam filters as well.

Another main irritation though I've always had with school accounts is they tend to go away when you leave the school. Part of why I wouldn't use one regularly. I've changed accounts several times but I've got every account I've ever used still fintering into Gmail now including an old old one through a free POP service from ten years ago (though all I get from it are outdated IGN update newsletters and ironically, meeting updates from a college Engineering Club.

Sina,

11 hours ago

@udi BankID is used in Sweden. Works with banks, university admission applications, student loans, 'IRS' tax services etc. http://www.bankid.com/en/

Mugzy,

11 hours ago

I was thinking on a different line. Aren't there websites which give discounts and features if you are a college student, which they recognize thru the .edu email ID ? I know there are ways to mess around with that, but if we indeed want to be legit I wonder how they would manage now.

Josh Miller,

11 hours ago

@Mugzy, good point, and that goes with my previous Facebook statement.

I suppose technically, in this case, you still get an .edu domain email address, it just doesn't go anywhere other than forwarding email to your existing service. They aren't giving you a mail box requiring them to keep and maintain mail servers.

Mugzy,

11 hours ago

@JoshMiller @Kara One thing the colleges can do is instead of having email accounts, do a default redirection to the student's choice email like gmail or yahoo. IEEE does that. Although moving to corporate gmail or yahoo completely is definitely one way of getting rid of email headaches I agree.
Idea - Like Corp GMail, they should start College Gmail if it doesn't already exist

Mugzy,

11 hours ago

@JoshMiller But you know there is an additional facet to it. While getting emails is okay, sending them would be thru gmail with the From field set to myname@mycollege.edu. Now although this looks great in theory, won't it be open to misuse since while sending the From field is not validated. Hmm may be the college mail servers can do that...okay I am getting too technical here hehe

Danielpatricio,

10 hours ago

I have about 5 emails and I use them each for a different purpose. I value my student email. Our profs don't take emails from non university emails. I think there are some purposes for which a university email can be more persuasive.

Mugzy,

10 hours ago

@danielpatricio On the more comic side bro, your comment made me think of a PhDComics issue I had read. Check this out http://tinyurl.com/5cskpy

Adelinejoie,

10 hours ago

This is great. If I don't have Mail in Mac that allows me to push my student mails through Mail, I would not daily/hourly/weekly check on my student mail. It would often be neglected, like I know many of friends did and hence, my school started with a texting services where students receive updates about important messages in school like exams schedules if they forget about school mail.

Danielpatricio,

10 hours ago

@mugzy That is hilarious! That is me! Now that you think about it I am sure some doctors would say I am a bit of a schizo based on my way of my "multiple personalities".

Mugzy,

10 hours ago

@danielpatricio Haha do not worry, with the online life, I am sure we all have multiple personalities! Not to mention being a Troll by night on one night and being a mage on the other!
Heard of the lady who virtually killed her virtual husband in Japan?

Danielpatricio,

10 hours ago

The way I look at it. You don't wear the same halloween costume to the office party that you would wear going clubbing with your friends. You are the same person just different costumes.

Mugzy,

10 hours ago

@danielpatricio Taking it to a more abstract level, its like putting on Masks isn't it? Like I have a different mask when I am with my friends and a different one when I talk with my boss.
Okay...what is this clip about again? :-))

Spuds,

8 hours ago

This makes sense. Most people would have a gmail, yahoo, hotmail or other email address so there really is no need for a college one.

Wheelyweb,

7 hours ago

why is this such a story? Sounds like all they did was decide how to apply their IT resources instead of just blindly doing what they've always done. Is it really so ground breaking that they thought about how to apply their resources?

Danielpatricio,

6 hours ago

I think we hijacked the conversation and took it in another direction.

What stood out to me was that the students were supposedly saying they already had emails.

My view is that the student email is a asset or representitive of a 'mask' of my identity.

Basically it turned into a disccusion about how many emails people have and how each one has a specific purpose or even identity.

Kara,

6 hours ago

@danielpatricio That's exactly what I see. I don't think I could go without mine for many reasons-profs, college recruiting, etc. But that's my opinion. I don't see that the e-mail that you make when you are 13, 14, or 15 will suit you well as a college student/maturing adult.

Udi,

Nov 22, 2008

@JoshMiller i rather think that some time in the near future we will need to rethink the whole name thing anyway. once a name was a decent enough identifier but in an increasingly online world having 3 million people with the same name sort of defeats the purpose. perhaps we will have some sort of identifier that is derived from our genetic code or something like that and to which all official information is tied. then the name you call yourself in person or that you use with friends and family can be more of a tag/nickname/pseudonym and can change with time or depending on who you are with (a practice that already exists/existed in some cultures)

Josh Miller,

Nov 22, 2008

@Udi Well, I wonder how well that would work. I've been "Ramen Junkie" online for ages but it seems weird on the few occasions when people call me "Ramen" offline.

Udi,

Nov 22, 2008

@JoshMiller i'm also used to and comfortable with my name but many chinese people already have different names for different occasions and chinese may become the dominant culture. we may just be the new "old fossils" in the making - not a pleasant thought. besides familiarity doesn't take that long. my cousins moved to SA as children and their parents gave them new names that were more "english friendly". i still call them by their hebrew names but it only took a few months for them to adapt. if it ever becomes the norm, people will just do it without thinking. then of course as this is conjecture, i may be completely wrong as future predictions often are. thanks for replying to my rantings, Ramen;-)