The university where I work has provided a forwarding option for a long time now. And just recently started offering Gmail accounts instead of using the university's servers. (I know several universities are doing this to cut costs.)
College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
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Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#12I think this is an excellent idea, however from the standpoint of someone who provides tech support to students at my university, this would be a disaster for a good portion of the student body. A good number of people here can barely turn on a computer (and we GIVE THEM a laptop). Assuming that people have an identity established seems logical, but is still too early. Some may say these are outliers, however looking…
Aren't people who go to university meant to be fairly bright? If they can't figure out email, they probably wouldn't benefit from a university education anyway.
I do tech support part time for students at my school, and I have to agree with the parent. I'm astounded every day by how bad some people are with computers. We have normal email accounts here, and people still have trouble figuring out to use them. I personally think its a great idea (the first thing I did when I got to school was forward my school account), but I'll bet 75% of the people wouldn't be able to figure it out.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#13While in all likelihood, this was done for cost-cutting purposes (as the article states), I actually like the idea. I'm a college student myself, and while I have an email address with the school, I just have all my mail forwarded from that account (which uses the awful Outlook Web interface and doesn't offer PHP3 or IMAP) to my GMail account. It's considerably more convenient. Some people will probably disagree with…
Erm...too late to edit it now, but that should have read POP3. Yeesh.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#14I think this is an excellent idea, however from the standpoint of someone who provides tech support to students at my university, this would be a disaster for a good portion of the student body. A good number of people here can barely turn on a computer (and we GIVE THEM a laptop). Assuming that people have an identity established seems logical, but is still too early. Some may say these are outliers, however looking…
How big of a difference is it between creating and maintaining an e-mail address for each student, and instructing students as to how to create an e-mail account with say Gmail, for instance?
In both cases the student needs to figure out how to access a mail system in order to actually use the e-mail address.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#15I started college about 11 years ago, and there were people who didn't check their email accounts because they never used email. College email has become ubiquitous and then obsolete in the span of a decade.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#16Unless your school lets you keep your address forever, I don't understand why people use it at all. At my school once you graduate you lose your school email unless you become a paying member of the alumni association. I just forward all my email to my GMail address and now I don't have to worry about it.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#17It's interesting that my first thought after reading this was, "I wonder how Facebook will compensate for this?" I know university networks (verified by .edu email addresses) used to be the bread and butter of Facebook but maybe they're already becoming less important...
Same here, until I read they were forwarding, which works for me. I never use my college email for anything important beyond a couple of somewhat annoying profs who set their filters to ignore everything but college email addresses and refused to send emails to private email addresses, which even the school itself uses to send information vs. the official .edu address (excuuuuse me if I don't login to the insanely backwards webmail more than once a month if at all, so I miss your email about something along with the entire rest of the class..)...as well as once on facebook, glassdoor, ms dreamspark and like one other time.
Wish more colleges at least gave an option, or did only forwarding as opposed to in-house solutions.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#18I think this is an excellent idea, however from the standpoint of someone who provides tech support to students at my university, this would be a disaster for a good portion of the student body. A good number of people here can barely turn on a computer (and we GIVE THEM a laptop). Assuming that people have an identity established seems logical, but is still too early. Some may say these are outliers, however looking…
How big of a difference is it between creating and maintaining an e-mail address for each student, and instructing students as to how to create an e-mail account with say Gmail, for instance? In both cases the student needs to figure out how to access a mail system in order to actually use the e-mail address.
Also, a lot of universities have their application process online and require an e-mail address to apply. So the information is already available and that would eliminate the step of requiring the student to set up forwarding manually.
If it's already a method of contact between you and the university, why add another place to look by creating a separate inbox?
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#19> They considered offering from both Google and Microsoft, but eventually decided against both in lieu of the new forwarding option. UCF recently had to make this decision and went with Microsoft. And now our students do not have an option of forwarding those messages to an address of their choice.
Sure you do. Microsoft's offering provides a trimmed down Exchange with Outlook Web Access. Simply login to OWA and can create a rule to forward all messages.
Re: College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts
#20> They considered offering from both Google and Microsoft, but eventually decided against both in lieu of the new forwarding option. UCF recently had to make this decision and went with Microsoft. And now our students do not have an option of forwarding those messages to an address of their choice.
Sure you do. Microsoft's offering provides a trimmed down Exchange with Outlook Web Access. Simply login to OWA and can create a rule to forward all messages.
I've been looking around at the school's interface and at the Windows Live account area and I haven't found anything yet. If https://owa.msoutlookonline.net/Login.aspx is the OWA you are talking about, then I can't log in to that.
I remember someone saying that forwarding was turned off so that people would have to use the web interface. I don't know why they would even make than an option.