The Future of Campus Email
From the site: "Boston College takes the important step of not providing incoming freshmen with email addresses. I have argued this before, but, I simply don't understand why campuses spend so much money trying to maintain and provide students with email addresses. There are so many free services out there..." Unattributed, academhack, November 24, 2008. [Link] [Tags: none] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: The Future of Campus Email
For email that is push to students, this seems exactly right to me. For email that is send from students to instructors or campus administrators, it would be good for the alias to survive so the messages don't get caught in the recipients' spam filters. This is a harder and I wonder how BC will manage it.
The other part of this, not explicitly mentioned, is that electronic services for which email is a placeholder, likely can't serve the function of the swank athletic facility, where schools compete for students. So other services (storage space and Web publishing come immediately to mind) are probably next in the queue.
I expect a flurry of such announcements in the near future, given the tight budgets everyone is facing. [Comment]
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Re: The Future of Campus Email
I'm very much in two minds as to this one. I can see the advantages of students using personal email, but I can also see the benefits of University supplied email ...
Over a number of years, we have had a system that enabled students to register up to 3 email addresses, as well as their University one. Mosst did. We sent messages to all accounts. Towards the end of the year, maybe 1/3 were bouncing back due to errors, more students changed their email addresses, and didn't bother telling staff - then complained that we'd not told them important dates etc.
They were *told* to change their addresses ... but they didn't always bother.
I've also had the problem of students using inappropriate email names (Ser1alkiller was one particular memorable one) - and forgetting subject lines. Those messages are easy to ignore as potential spam when the inbox gets full.
My view is that once they get into the work place, they're going to have to start using corporate mail; they will often be able to configure their own clients to pick up email , to forward it etc.
I agree, part of what we're doing should be to teach students how to properly use email - whether that's thinking about the impression their user name gives, or tone of voice for particular audiences; however, it's also a time factor.
For what it's worth, our University has taken the completely opposite stance. We have been asked not to use non-uni emails for students (indeed, even staff who are studying part time have to use their Student a/c for course related email, not their staff one from the same institution!)
It's a difficult one, and I'm still unsure as to where I stand on it. [Comment]
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Re: The Future of Campus Email
Back in the 90's I was an MBA student at a business school in Arizona. All students were issued permanent e-mail addresses for official school communications. Because I still feel very much a part of the community, I continue to use the address to keep in touch with fellow alumni.
Sometime around 2000 or 2001 the school faced all sorts of problems with e-mail system maintenance, spam filtering, storage capacity, etc. I know many of my fellow alumni stopped using their accounts because of this. However, a couple of years later the school decided to outsource the entire system to Google, so now I have a school-branded account that works just like gmail. The solution has worked like a charm, and I'm pretty sure the school is paying much less for the service than what it would cost to run their own.
In short, I think there's real value in university-branded e-mail, from both a practical perspective as well as from a marketing standpoint. However, I don't see much sense in having a school run its own system when there are excellent specialized solutions available. At least that's my two cents worth... [Comment]
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