While receiving your college e-mail address has long been a milestone for pre-frosh everywhere, a new study from Educuse suggests that college e-mail accounts may be on the way out.

Educuse’s “Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2008 Summary Report” surveyed 930 colleges and universities about their IT practices and policies and found that about 10 percent of institutions are considering eliminating school-run e-mail accounts because so many students already have outside e-mail addresses.

That figure is significant increase from the findings of the 2004 version of the survey, in which only one to two percent of schools were thinking about doing away with e-mail accounts.

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Last week, University Information Services gave us some more details of the upcoming switch to Gmail-backed Hoyamail. Just as you were getting giddy about leaving antiquated GUMail behind forever, though, there was this disconcerting announcement:

Hoyamail is only accessible through the web at this time … We are launcing Hoyamail as an e-mail only solution and not opening access to other Google services such as Chat, Calendar, and Docs.

Wait—what? UIS is giving us Gmail but without any of the bells and whistles? What gives?

According to UIS Director Beth Ann Bergsmark, the stripped-down Hoyamail is only temporary. The want to get everyone transitioned to the new system and then in late September/early October they will put together a group of students, faculty ad staff to discuss which extra services to add.

Bergsmark also said that UIS wants to be careful in choosing which Google services to add to avoid creating confusion or overlap with services already provided by BlackBoard.

One issue in terms of adding extra apps and making Hoyamail more than just a web-based client is giving Gmail access to passwords and NetIDs. According to Bergsmark, Georgetown will be using Shibboleth system to shield students’ info, and UIS is still “waiting to see how these future applications interact with Shibboleth.”

Last week, we learned that UIS will finally be making the switch to GMail by the end of the summer. How would you have made the long-awaited announcement?

So you won’t be getting any email for a few days… but you will be getting Google!

After a couple obligatory delays (first we were told “early January,” then “by the end of the school year”), it looks like the long-awaited switch to GMail is actually going to happen before the end of the summer.  According to an email that UIS sent out last night, the new accounts will be ready by mid-August:

As you have probably heard by now, we will be opening new GUMail accounts for you in partnership with Google.  Your georgetown e-mail address will deliver messages to an inbox hosted by Google rather than one hosted by UIS. We are calling this new service Hoyamail which will provide you with much larger storage capacity (7 Gigabytes) and advanced web interface.  You will also keep this account along with your Georgetown e-mail address after you graduate from Georgetown.  MSB Graduate students will continue to use GroupWise e-mail.

We plan to have the Hoyamail accounts ready by mid-August and will send you updates as that date approaches.  As part of the switch to Hoyamail, we will not be able to copy the e-mail you currently have in your GUMail account. We will have documentation available with some strategies for either archiving your current GUMail or forwarding it to your new Google powered account.

Exciting!  And, in a move that shows some real effective use of timing, UIS took the opportunity presented by the big GMail announcement to mention that there will be an email outage this Independence Day weekend (from 10 p.m. July 2nd to 8 a.m. July 6th) during which you won’t be able to send or receive messages through your Georgetown account.  But hey, GMail!

Photo from Flickr user manfrys, used under a Creative Commons license.

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Alexa Rozell reunited with an old foe.

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Someday…

Way back in October, the University announced its intention to scrap its dated GUMail system for students and switch to Google Apps for Education. They predicted the move would be done by January or February. Everyone rejoiced!

But then January and February rolled around and… nothing. When we checked in on with them at the end of March, UIS Director Beth Ann Bergsmark said that since students will be keeping their georgetown.edu addresses, mail will still have to be rerouted through a directory service and UIS had to make upgrades to facilitate this.

Technical set-backs aside, though, Bergsmark said:

We do project having Gmail ready by the end of the school year [so] graduating seniors will be able to move to their Gmail accounts before they lose their old … accounts.

Well, here’s hoping that if four years at Georgetown have taught you anything, seniors, it’s not to trust the timetables you get from the administration.

Here’s what University Spokesperson Julie Green-Bataille had to say now about the switch:

[The] latest estimate is that the transition for students will take place after graduation, so current seniors will not be included, but will be able to forward their Georgetown email address as many already do.

Sorry, Class of 2009, hope you didn’t have your heart set on Gmail as your graduation gift…

The offending email that went out a few hours ago:

Dear students,

At the end of July and the beginning of August, University Information Services will be moving faculty and staff to a separate e-mail system. We will require two weekend long outages to accomplish this, scheduled for:

July 25 at 6:00 PM to July 28 at 8:00 AM
August 1 at 6:00 PM to August 4 at 8:00 AM

During these outages, you will not be able to access GUMail e-mail.

If you have a critical need for e-mail during these outages, please contact the Student Help Desk for assistance…

What constitutes a “critical need for e-mail”? Weekend tasks from your Devil Wears Prada-esque boss? Love notes from your significant other? The secret code word for a Kidz Bop concert presale? UIS doesn’t provide any criteria for what makes an excuse legit. Everyone should apply for a dispensation just to see if they’re favored students.

It’s good that Georgetown is attempting to improve faculty and staff email service; students should be next. And for most students, any important messages of a non-Georgetown nature are probably going through Gmail anyway. But 62 email-less hours in a row, two weekends in a row? It’s going to be rough.

Misguided efforts at The New York Times to eke pennies out of an ancient internet revenue model have long restricted access to the adorable Paul Krugman (pictured). Krugman, along with the rest of the Times’s columnists and much of its archives, was behind the TimesSelect pay wall.

Fortunately, if you have a .edu email address, you can finally be reunited with Maureen Dowd. The Times is letting .edu emails have access to 100 TimeSelect articles a month, which is a solid deal. Click here to get it. It’s sort of complicated to do if you don’t already have the free account, so do that first.

- Will Sommer, Blog Editor