>But when you consider the university’s efforts to accommodate what students and faculty are already using — and its ultimate choice of Google — it raises a larger question. Why do schools even provide an email account anyway? Gmail and most web-based clients are free. Schools — especially state school strapped for funding — could save on huge infrastructure costs by cutting the email systems and just letting student use their own accounts.
Why? Verifiability, that's why. Students still use the "I didn't get the e-mail" excuse. Having a University controlled mail system allows administrators to see that the message went out and that it arrived at destination.
When I confirmed the forwarding between my University e-mail and my GMail account, I had to click past a very stern warning saying that I was now responsible for my own e-mail and it would be my responsibility to ensure that my e-mail address was up-to-date and that official university correspondence was still getting through. In other words, I couldn't use the "I didn't get the e-mail" excuse, even when the email actually never arrived. I never had any issues, but I don't know if that was just because I was lucky.
We have to remember that e-mail is not a reliable protocol. Mail delivery can fail for any one of a number of reasons. If you're using e-mail to convey financial information (like billing reminders or due dates), you have to take that into account. Having both mailboxes under your control allows you to add a layer of verification on top of SMTP.
yea this really jumped out at me. it's not just to verify receipt, it's all kinds of control (eg going into a box and deleting a message). the journalist is blindingly ignorant of the domain. i guess they were just desperate to provide some kind of insight of their own at the end.
Isn't this a bit circular? You need a controlled university email system... so that you have control over it?
If users were expected to get by using their own email addresses, there'd never be a reason to go in and delete a message for them.
The author's musing about why the university even needs to run an email system is more valid than I think either of you above are giving credit for (I think the verify-ability issue is also overblown.. university students should be held to a personal responsibility standard where you don't need technical 'verify-ability'... these aren't high school students).
However, I can think of at least one area where not providing an official school email address would become a problem -- many student educational discount programs require an .edu address.
>university students should be held to a personal responsibility standard where you don't need technical 'verify-ability'... these aren't high school students).
Fair enough. But, in my experience, "my" generation doesn't know any more about computers than their grandmothers. In theory, you could insist that they be responsible for their own e-mail. In practice it'd be a disaster. Even if the e-mail system were perfect, messages would still get lost. Messages would still get accidentally deleted. Having an e-mail system under university control means that mistakes can be undone by the central helpdesk as well as the user.
Another issue with allowing personal e-mail is archiving. If the university is under legal obligation to archive emails, it's much simpler to have a central e-mail system that all messages pass through. That way, there's no legal liability resulting from messages not being archived properly.
Why? Verifiability, that's why. Students still use the "I didn't get the e-mail" excuse. Having a University controlled mail system allows administrators to see that the message went out and that it arrived at destination.
When I confirmed the forwarding between my University e-mail and my GMail account, I had to click past a very stern warning saying that I was now responsible for my own e-mail and it would be my responsibility to ensure that my e-mail address was up-to-date and that official university correspondence was still getting through. In other words, I couldn't use the "I didn't get the e-mail" excuse, even when the email actually never arrived. I never had any issues, but I don't know if that was just because I was lucky.
We have to remember that e-mail is not a reliable protocol. Mail delivery can fail for any one of a number of reasons. If you're using e-mail to convey financial information (like billing reminders or due dates), you have to take that into account. Having both mailboxes under your control allows you to add a layer of verification on top of SMTP.