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.