Colleges Consider Eliminating Campus Email

With many colleges and universities running short on money, administrators are trying to cut costs wherever possible. It seems that one trend that a large number of schools are aiming to follow is the elimination of campus email accounts. A study done by the education-technology group EDUCAUSE shows that 10% of schools are looking at cutting campus email accounts.

According to school administration, the current campus email system is rendered useless because most incoming freshman already have established email accounts. While this may be true, the decision to cut the program runs counter to the wishes of the majority of the student body. In an ECAR study of 27,846 freshmen and seniors from 103 institutions, 82.5 percent of the students reported that a campus e-mail account was their preferred choice of communication. This fact alone should be enough to encourage schools to save the campus email system, but there are still more reasons that the schools may not have considered.

Campus-Wide Communication

Having a list of email addresses that the administration has assigned to each student means a more efficient and organized way of communicating information about school events or policies. It’s much more difficult to try to keep an updated list of student body email addresses than it is to simply have a standard campus email address directory already in place. A directory that can be accessed by teachers and administrators (or even by the public through a school’s website) provides a valuable resource that ensures students can be reached when other less reliable methods of communication have failed.

Emergency Situations

Students email addresses can literally be a lifesaver. In an emergency situation, students can receive important information and instructions via email. With a list where the onus of keeping contact information updated falls on the student, you can never be sure if the emails are being sent to the most current address.

Security and Assurance

An institutional email address lends validity to the sender. The recipient can be reasonably assured that the sender is affiliated with their purported institution. This can go a long way to promoting trust when dealing with the public, much more so than if the sender is coming from an email service that doesn’t require proof of identity such as Google or Yahoo. Additionally, when applying for a job via email, having a campus email address provides a minor proof that you are affiliated with the institution you’ve listed on your resume.

There are websites and businesses out there that require a verified campus email account (one ending in .edu) in order to give access to certain services or deals. For example, many software retailers offer academic discounts to students who provide a campus email address and Facebook requires a campus email address to join your school’s network.

Problems With Forwarding

Many schools are replacing their email account system with a system that simply forwards your school email to another address of your choosing. While better than eliminating campus email altogether, this solution presents its own unique issues, namely that the responsibility of making sure your school’s email address is forwarding to the proper address still falls on the student. If a student changes his/her email address, that student must change the forwarding address for their school’s address. If the student forgets, the messages go to the wrong inbox.

There are also some issues with emails from schools being marked as spam by certain service providers. Important messages can be lost or delayed and when the message is regarding your scholarship, this can be a huge headache for the student.

Additionally, unless you’re using an email service provider that supports a custom “From” address (like Gmail), when you reply to emails sent to your campus email address, you’ll be replying as a different address. This can be confusing to the recipient, especially if that different email address does not clearly identify you by name.

To complicate matter even further, if the email address you are sending to uses SPF (Sender Policy Framework, an address validation system designed to prevent spam and phishing emails by verifying a message’s “From” field) your email, though legitimate, may bounce back or be reported as spam. The only way to bypass SPF is to send mail through your domain’s SMTP server, which can’t be done if only an email forwarding system exists.

The email forwarding system might work well for some students who only want to check one inbox and aren’t too concerned with messages occasionally bouncing back, but it should be an opt-in solution, not a replacement for actual email accounts.

A Smart Decision

Some schools are moving from their own email servers to commercial email providers. Indeed, both Google and Microsoft are offering their educational email services for free, hoping to get students hooked on their respective systems. By outsourcing, schools can save money while still reaping the benefits.

A campus email account can be a reliable source of communication during a student’s tenure and, if allowed to retain their account, provides a link to their alma mater after they graduate. Ultimately, the system helps make administration easier on the administrators and provides an extra line of communication between students and faculty, which is always a positive thing.

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