November 19, 2008
Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts
Many students don’t even want a college e-mail address these days because they already have well-established digital identities before they arrive on campus. That’s the conclusion that officials at Boston College came to in a recent review of their online services. So the college recently decided to stop offering full e-mail accounts to incoming students starting next fall.
Instead of a standard college e-mail account, next year’s freshmen will be offered an e-mail-forwarding service that will pass along messages to whatever personal e-mail account a student specifies, said Mary C. Corcoran, associate vice president for user and support services at the college. A student named John Smith might be given the address johnsmith@bc.edu, for instance, but the address will simply pass any incoming mail along to Mr. Smith’s Google mailbox, or to his Microsoft Hotmail, or to any other account the student might already have. The college currently runs such a forwarding service for alumni.
“Students weren’t really using the Boston College accounts as much as we would like them to,” said Ms. Corcoran. “It just becomes one more thing for them to check because their life is somewhere else.”
College officials looked into outsourcing their e-mail to Google or to Microsoft as many other colleges and universities have. Both companies offer such services free to colleges, hoping to hook students on their systems. But Ms. Corcoran said they decided against signing a deal with Google or Microsoft.
“We heard that the contracts were incredibly difficult to negotiate,” said Ms. Corcoran. “Some colleges were in negotiations for a couple of years.” The college also worried about the long-term implications. “At some point, who knows, they could start charging us,” she said.
And this way, the students get to pick which service they want to use for their e-mail, she said.
She said she doesn’t know of another college that has taken the e-mail-forwarding strategy with its students. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Wednesday November 19, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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Good move. Students often say that they didn’t check their email so couldn’t get the assignment. Yet, they check their PERSONAL email every minute!
— Nokeke Nov 19, 04:09 PM #
What happens if a student does not receive an important email… is the student responsible for their email provider’s reliability? I hope there’s more to the story and announcements or important dates (like add/drop deadlines) will be posted to Blackboard or a website.
— Mike Z Nov 19, 04:18 PM #
This initally seems a good decision on the part of BC, but we encountered a serious drawback at our school when we tried forwarding e-mail in this same way: we found that students changed their e-mail carrier frequently and often did not notify the school of the change. As a result, they often did not get e-mails from faculty, but they never seemed to mind missing out on those e-mails. I’m unsure whether it matters who their carrier is; many students just do not see such correspondence as important, even if it means missing an important notice about scholarship possibilities, about a class cancellation, about being suspended.
— Jack F. Nov 19, 04:44 PM #
Well Sonny,
Back in the olden days we not only walked to school in the snow up hill both ways, we also taught without e-mail.
— GL Nov 19, 05:10 PM #
I can’t believe students don’t consider the types of notices Jack mentions as important! If a forwarding service is used, students should sign something that says they are responsible for whatever happens if they don’t get those notices. Can emails be forwarded to Facebook inboxes? If so, that would be another logical choice.
— deborah Nov 19, 05:15 PM #
So, what happens when messages run afoul of a system’s junk mail filter? I went through a period where all email from our testing center, including scores, went straight to my junk folder. The school’s own filter was chucking emails from within the University! Would Gmail be able to tell the difference between good and bad email sent to joeschmo@bc.edu?
— Greg Nov 19, 05:28 PM #
Snail-Mail Roolz!
— Captain America Nov 19, 05:37 PM #
I use multiple email accounts, but I always check the junk/spam folder first, then if there’s nothing in it that I want, I delete it all. I do occasionally find something valuable that shouldn’t have gone in there. But it’s critical that you have the option to see all your junk.
— deborah Nov 19, 05:58 PM #
We have always had email forwarding. But it was the student’s responsiblity to keep the forward up to date. We have since migrated to gmail and they have a great forwarding option, again, the student’s responsiblity. It is in our email policy that it is the student’s responsibility to have access to their university email. It has worked well for us.
— NoCal Nov 19, 07:53 PM #
One objection I see here and have heard privately is “what if students don’t get an e-mail from faculty/the university.”
That seems to be an odd argument. A student could move and not leave a proper forwarding address and thereby not get the snail mail sent to him. Should we require all students to rent a university provided physical mailbox?
Students frequently seem to change phone #s and not change them with university officials. Should we require them to subscribe to a university mandated phone or perhaps voice mail service?
If not, what is so darn special about e-mail??
— Brian Carnell Nov 19, 09:26 PM #
“Should we require all students to rent a university provided physical mailbox?” I don’t know if charging them for it is a good idea or not but many small schools have done just that.
Rather than delivering mail to each dorm or apartment complex, the university assigns each student (on campus and off campus) a box at the student center.
Students maintain the same box number as long as they are enrolled which solves the problem of students moving apartments each year.
If students come to campus for class, they can spend five minutes and check their boxes.
Why not?
— Expat Prof Nov 20, 02:50 AM #
I applaud BC’s efforts here. The only downside is lack of unified authentication but for our student, I doubt it is the problem others would face with this. In reality we need to find successful ways to get information to our students in other ways (IM, Txt Msg, Social Networking). I don’t know the answer but I DO know that students are using e-mail less and less frequently and we can either swim up stream and fight this, or acknowledge it and adjust.
— JS Nov 20, 06:03 AM #
It is not clear from the article whether BC is giving student the option of having a BC email account if they want. Throughout my time in higher education, I have found my university based email to be most convenient and rather prefer it over Gmail or other web based options. The first thing I have done upon arrival at a new university is to find out about my new email!
— Jarrod Nov 20, 06:21 AM #
If I were a student at BC, I’d think it really “keen” to have a BC e-mail address.
— Larry Gillis, FL Nov 20, 06:54 AM #
Bad move. In a professional environment, one should use the professional e-mail address. College students need to view college as the beginning of their professional life. No more “hotmama69@whatever” for contacting faculty! Besides, my spam filter is set so high, it would grab most of their personal addresses, and I routinely delete all spam without reviewing it. Many students have received lower grades for late submissions for just this reason.
— bio Prof Nov 20, 07:00 AM #
I was a Boston College student, class of 2006.
When I was there we all had a BC Webmail account, and had the OPTION to set the mailbox to forward if we chose. No one I knew did.
The campus email boxes were tied into our “WebCT” programs, and our class rosters, and even to our registration of classes. I found this to be invaluable.
I understand that most students want to have their own emails, but just as a job might provide their employees with a separate cellphone/blackberry, having a “school” email was very helpful.
— Doug Bush Nov 20, 07:22 AM #
Re: #15 *College students need to view college as the beginning of their professional life. *
One cannot or need not act professionally before one get accepted to college? Having a degree does not equal being a Professional. What a slap in the face of the majority of the world who never go to college and yet somehow manage to hold a job, make money, feed theiry family, pay taxes, contribute to society.
— Kevin Nov 20, 09:00 AM #
I would like to offer some points of clarification on Boston College’s approach to student email service.
Students DO want a Boston College identity. Incoming freshman will in fact be provided with a Boston College email address of the format firstname.lastname@bc.edu. This address will remain with them after graduation permitting a desired lifelong affiliation with the University. The address will forward to the email repository of the student or alumni choosing.
In addition, it has always been the responsibility of students to check their email for important University messages or announcements. Boston College is also exploring the use of our portal as another location for the placement personalized official messages.
For those interested in more detail about Boston College’s approach to student email please feel free to contact me directly.
— Mary Corcoran Nov 20, 09:15 AM #
Our university requires students to use their university email accounts. This way there is no whining about not getting messages or problems with students who change their email service providers or addresses several times a year.
— bcowan Nov 20, 09:18 AM #
@MaryCorcoran
Your clarification speaks volumes. Of course incoming freshman want a BC identity; however, BC isn’t giving them a full e-mail account…only forwarding.
I hope that you will give students an option for a full e-mail account. I enjoyed my email account and webpage and unix shell back in the day, and I hope that students will be able to have that option as well.
— Ubu Walker Nov 20, 09:39 AM #
Boston University, the one with an undefeated football team for more than a decade, follows the sensible strategy of providing student email accounts with reasonable storage limits. There also is a clear path for anyone to forward to any other address that they use. Faculty can send class emails by calling up their classlist. If a student is not forwarding properly, their university mailbox fills up and messages bounce back. That way faculty can remind particular students in class about the issue.
Forcing students to use external email services, each with their own business model, is simply a way of privatizing an essential service. Maybe that’s why so many BC students live off campus and reduce the quality of life in Brighton and Allston with their irresponsible behavior.
:-)
— Bill S. Nov 20, 09:51 AM #
Students tell us that “e-mail is for old people.” (Before anyone gets indignant about young whippersnappers, remember that it wasn’t long ago that some of us said that paper was for old people, but our predecessors had to learn e-mail to keep up with us anyway. I’m not sure requiring us to use paper would have worked.)
— HIED doc Nov 20, 09:52 AM #
I bet that they still won’t reduce their technology fee after this. I would be upset if I paid my fee and couldn’t access their Outlook Server…which has far more benefits than simply email access.
— Ryan Nov 20, 09:56 AM #
So, what happens now for the security of the email content? This move opens BC up for 1000s of FERPA violations. Yes, the student notifies BC of the address so that part is covered. However, will all BC employees look in their SIS to find the authorized email address before responding to an email with educational record data? It wouldn’t happen on my campus.
— Mark Nov 20, 10:39 AM #
Stupid idea. I have a spam filter on my email that blocks most things coming from personal email accounts. I have a policy on my syllabus that requires students to contact me through their campus email if they expect a response, because I don’t check my spam folder at all—I have too many other things to do. If a student says “I emailed you the assignment” and I didn’t get it, I ask if they used their campus account; if the answer is no, it’s not my problem. I also communicate with my students through our D2L site, which sends emails to their campus account; if they don’t check, they don’t get the notice—again, not my problem.
BTW, I am not “old” either—I’m tenure-track and tech-savvy. I just think that I have the right to set limits.
— Alayne Nov 20, 10:43 AM #
As #15 suggests, this will put a burden on faculty that will be receiving email from students. Not only will I have to remember that joecool@blah.com is really John Smith, I also have to make sure that his email doesn’t end up in the spam box.
— David Nov 20, 10:52 AM #
#25’s points is well stated (and echoed by other posters here). It’s not surprising to me that BC is the first (only?) university to implement a “forwarding-only” option for active students.
— Felix Nov 20, 11:18 AM #
I would be worried about my mail servers being blacklisted by Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo. If they see the sudden increase in messages coming from the college that users now classify as spam. I see a lot of notices alumni sign up for reported as spam to their provider. I can see the same thing happening with mass mailing announcements to students.
— Lee Nov 20, 11:19 AM #
If the cafeteria doesn’t deliver and professors don’t make house calls, why should the e-mail service bend to accommodate the “well-established digital identities” of the students? A college should be just like any other professional organization wherein members are responsible for taking the steps necessary to receive communications. In addition, students might change their e-mail addresses without notifying the college. Then you have the same problem. With the growing popularity an accessibility of smartphones and similar mobile technology, it shouldn’t be that difficult for students to keep up on their correspondence.
— Tom H. Nov 20, 11:41 AM #
I’m a Boston College administrator and the father of two graduates and one current student, and all of them have BC accounts and none uses them except to bounce email to their personal accounts. It worked for them while students, and it works for them now. Certainly, there are going to be missed messages along the way—as there were way back when email was gaining on us but not universally adopted or admired, particularly by faculty, as I recall—and if the mosaic of email, Blackboard, text messaging, et. al., fails to offer us (higher education) a coherent set of communications standards, well I’m sure we’ll come up with something. I myself have always favored picture postcards—which were once as great a communications rage in these United States as is text messaging today. And meanwhile, Boston College can take resources it currently uses to be a redundant ISP and use them to steward productive and useful academic programs through these hard times.
As for #21, Mr. “Bill S.,” who took the occasion of this serious discussion to offer a swipe at Boston College students, if you’d like to ooch your true and not pseudonymous self out from behind your smirky little emoticon fig leaf, I for one would like to see what you’re made of.
Sincerely,
— Ben Birnbaum Nov 20, 12:48 PM #
Requiring students to use their .edu email account is the only way to minimize fraud that takes place at universities, where students pose as persons other than themselves. Sure someone may tap into an email account and use it illegally, but it is one very important measure of security that this is probably the person who you think it is.
Secondly, there has to be some means of guaranteeing students receive notifications, whether academic or campus safety. The lack of this assurance leaves the university wide open to law suits.
This is a very short-sighted decision.
— Linda Nov 20, 02:03 PM #
This is about 10 years overdue. When I was a TA at a small state university in the late 1990s, a common complaint from students was about being “forced” to use university-provided e-mail addresses instead of Hotmail and other popular non-university services. At the time, we supposedly required students to use their university e-mail addresses for classwork. They dealt with this requirement by ignoring it en masse, and TAs and faculty frankly had better things to do than nag students about which e-mail addresses they were using.
— Starbug Nov 20, 02:13 PM #
This is stupid. Part of having a @bu.edu or a @college.edu is to give students legitimacy when they send email to say, professors or when they are recruiting. This is a really bad move.
— Student Nov 20, 08:48 PM #
My university used to offering forwarding, but stopped it after Hotmail and other providers often silently discarded emails from the university. Not just marked as spam and put into a junk folder – never delivered at all.
— James Nov 21, 04:47 AM #
My university has created a task force to look at the issue of student email. It is charged with looking at the options available for providing student email, including insourcing, outsourcing and forwarding. While anecdotes are sometimes illuminating and often amusing I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has developed a solid, well-articulated business case for why student email accounts should be provided or sponsored by the institution.
— K. Boswell Nov 21, 09:32 AM #
I have the same concern as Mark in #24. I may answer a general question about a course to a request coming from an off-campus email, but I would never reply to an off-campus email with any specific information about a student’s grades or performance. Anyone can set up a free email account in moments, pose as a student, and request information that is covered under FERPA. While there’s potential for abuse of a campus email address too, at least it is an “official” communication channel.
— David Nov 21, 09:45 AM #
Many of the complaints here regarding spam, missing/lost important emails, and server blacklisting are rooted in SMTP protocol level issues. Email was designed when the internet could be trusted a bit more. The signal to noise ratio and overhead associated with email in general makes it a lousy method of communication anymore. Combine that with the constant and instant access to communication provided by today’s phones, and students are using it less and less. I would argue that BC won’t see any more problems with student communication one way or the other. The inherent insecurity in the SMTP protocol (as comment 24 noted), in the face of E-discovery, PCI, HIPPA, is also making email less attractive as a general means of communication. I say good on BC for reducing their infrastructure overhead and the clutter in students’ lives.
— Matt Nov 21, 10:09 AM #
To #24, I have to disagree about concerns over email security. Email never has been secure, so the right way to protect student privacy is to deliver sensitive info through your portal.
— Michael Nov 22, 10:21 AM #
Has anyone ever considered the really radical idea of using Postal Mail for really really important and confidential matters such as grade reports?
— Mark Smith Nov 23, 12:07 AM #
I’m not sure why people are applauding this move. I assume that the option to forward mail from a BC email account has always existed. All they are doing now is eliminating the option for students to access their mail through BC and force them to access it elsewhere.
Why are they simply eliminating an option?! Presumably so they don’t have to use their servers to filter spam and whatnot. They can now just push the problem to whatever external ISP the student chooses. Seems like a purely cost-saving move to me.
(Of course, I may be reading their motives incorrectly, but it’s hard for me to see what the benefit is here.)
— Anonymous Nov 24, 04:26 PM #
This step by Boston College makes a great deal of sense. Many of the arguments are either “professional” and that students need a bc.edu, or student’s emails will get trapped by SPAM filters.
Either of these can be argued. Several email systems will mimic an address, hotmail, gmail. You can send a message from the program that mimics another address that you have. I have email accounts on five systems, but only use two. One is work related on a outlook server. The other four (three are also work related, go a single account that will mimic messages from the other servers. So when I receive a message from another server the message that I send appears to have come from the server that forwarded the message. Of course to mimic you must have access to another server that you have rights to use.
The SPAM argument is one that exhibits laziness. To lazy to check the SPAM filter at the beginning of a course to make certain that your students have right to send you a message. You could require at the first class that all students send a blank email to you, so that you can release their addresses.
Back in the day of snail mail did you receive mail at locations other than your home and work?
— Jim Nov 25, 10:33 AM #
Our college (SLCC) offers the email forwarding service and has for at least a year. I think it would be interesting and VERY good if they went to strictly the forwarding service though. It would help so much.
— Marie Dec 1, 02:24 PM #
I agree with those who think it’s a lousy idea. Every semester I have students who have their college email accounts set up to bounce their emails to their hotmail, gmail, or other personal email accounts, and every semester I have students who never receive my emails because their personal servers identify the bounced emails as spam and block them. I don’t know they’ve been blocked because the blockage happens between the college server and their personal server; they don’t know I sent them an email that was blocked because hotmail etc don’t keep spam folders but just silently delete. Even if I discover my email has been blocked I can’t let the student know because my only contact info is the email address that doesn’t work! Starbug (post # 32) supports BC’s move by noting “At the time, we supposedly required students to use their university e-mail addresses for classwork. They dealt with this requirement by ignoring it en masse, and TAs and faculty frankly had better things to do than nag students about which e-mail addresses they were using.”
For heaven’s sake! These people are supposed to be adults—if they can’t be bothered to check the communication method that they know is used by instructors at the institution to which they pay their tuition, that’s their problem and they deserve any penalties for missed work etc that might arise as a result. No way should anyone be nagging them to check their email. Would Starbug suggest that we give wake-up calls to students who have trouble getting out of bed in time for our classes, and if that doesn’t work, that maybe we should repeat our classes later in the day for the slugabeds?
Ann
— Ann Dec 1, 10:33 PM #
How about removing forwarding altogether? The “Fwd:” in the subject line alone increases an email’s spam score.
Anyway, in the end, I think much of this boils down to a cultural divide. Institutions see email as a convenient way to mass-message. It’s the “push” model of mass communication, otherwise known as spam.
Students, on the other hand, use the pull model of mass communication. They put up status messages on facebook and allow anyone interested to actually pull up more detail. They publish a blog article and allow interested readers to comment and interact. They sign up for status notifications that they want to see.
It’s time for institutions to get out of the spam business and start thinking of smarter, more effective ways to mass communicate.
— Paul Dec 2, 01:09 PM #
About ten years ago, many universities began getting out of the business of becoming internet providers as internet access became a commodity and readily affordable and available.
In the long term, this approach towards email — whether it becomes outsourcing or forwarding services — will be seen in the same way.
— Michelle Dec 3, 09:39 AM #
#26 – You mention the burden of faculty receiving emails from personal accounts. Since I graduated from BC, I have had my BC email address forwarding to my gmail account. Gmail provides a free service (as I’m sure many others do) where I can change the “from” email so it matches my BC email address. This way, I am still able to send emails from my BC email account without actually having to log into a different mailbox. Although, I feel like most students will be too lazy to set up this feature, and will most likely email professors using their personal email.
— Sylvia Dec 3, 02:06 PM #
Also, to #44, when an email is forwarded from my BC account to my gmail account it NEVER has the FWD: in the subject line.
— Sylvia Dec 3, 02:08 PM #
Unfortunately, I believe that student’s don’t keep their “email” updated all the time. The forwarding email sounds good, but you’re then relying on the students to keep their email address valid and up-to-date.
Maybe a message board for the students will work.
ORRRR, here’s the best thing I LOVE hearing from students…“I didn’t turn the assignment in because I didn’t get the email. ARE YOU SURE you sent it to me??”
ORRR,
“I sent you an email regarding my absense and needed an extension on the assignment…”
— Sean Dec 3, 03:34 PM #
As an adjunct reference librarian, I used to be required to provide students with assistance with their email accounts after our IT folks went home for the day. Most students just wanted to forward to their gmail or other accounts. I don’t know who is handling these questions now but it took so much of my time that I very little time for helping students who had real research needs. I think this “new” service will benefit students in more ways than one!
— elnnj Dec 16, 11:03 AM #
no…atleast college emails are safe and aren’t tracked by big brothers….if the colleges start forwarding the mail to student’s email addresses, it wont be safe. we cant feel safe about one’s privacy.
— ram Dec 17, 10:21 AM #