Comments on: Will college e-mail accounts get phased out?

By: Also in the 21st century

Also in the 21st century — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:36:26 +0000

I went and looked at the survey and it’s a little unclear, but it seems like they’re talking about addresses and not accounts. Georgetown can do away with the account (i.e. server space, etc.) and nobody would care, but ANY school thinking about getting rid of their @schoolname.edu forwarding address is DUMB. The reasons for keeping it are obvious and spelled out above, and I’m no IT professional, but I can’t imagine there would be anything more than minimal upkeep and server space / bandwidth requirements.

By: 21st century

21st century — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:23:57 +0000

My first thought while reading this: Do college and universities give students e-mail addresses because they think we don’t already have our own?? If that’s the case, then get rid of them.

But I do think an argument exists to having an institutional affiliated space on e-mail to get messages and communicate with one another beyond a personal e-mail account.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:18:50 +0000

I can see Colleges phasing out the actual mail storage part of things, since it’s very easy to just forward that to someone’s “real” e-mail address. But I think having something with @georgetown.edu attached to the end of it is here to stay. It’s useful for gaining credibility and proving one’s association with the university. It’s also in the college’s best interest to provide a professional e-mail address to students so that they don’t go applying to internships with a username they picked in 4th grade.

And even if undergrads may have other e-mail accounts, and would only use this one for a few years, I think there’s a far stronger argument to be made for giving faculty an actual inbox.