For Nevada’s most established university, the concept of having an “email for life” seems to have a limited lifespan of only nine years.
The University of Nevada, Reno, commemorating its 150th anniversary, initially provided students with a “lifetime” university email address powered by Google. However, this service is now facing discontinuation.
The reason behind this decision is primarily attributed to cost, as explained by Sasi Pillay, the chief information officer and vice president of information technology at UNR.
The tech giant, Google, informed the university that it would no longer offer its student email service for free through the Google Workspace for Education program, citing changes in terms and conditions that necessitated charging for the service, as reported by Nilla.
In response to this shift, UNR would have been required to pay $80,000 annually to maintain the service, a cost that would ultimately have been transferred to students through a technology fee, according to Pillay.
This alteration impacts a significant number of students at the university, considering that UNR had nearly 22,000 students enrolled in 2023.
UNR’s Transition to Microsoft for Student Emails
To alleviate the burden of additional costs on students, UNR opted to migrate their university email system to Microsoft, the platform already utilized by faculty and staff.
Although the Microsoft email service utilized by the university is a paid service, the company agreed to incorporate student emails at no extra cost. This transition not only grants students access to the complete suite of Microsoft services available to professors but also facilitates smoother collaboration and reduces conflicts arising from managing two separate systems, as highlighted by Pillay.
Apart from enhancing synergy, the switch to Microsoft also enhances security measures, Pillay emphasized.
Pillay stated, “The Google environment for student email was somewhat unmonitored and unregulated. We now have a 24⁄7 monitoring service in place for the Microsoft environment.”
Students are advised to migrate any existing emails from their previous “nevada.unr.edu” address via Google to the new “unr.edu” address on the Microsoft platform by the end of May this year. Although the university initially explored handling the email migration internally, it encountered various complexities and technical challenges, including the need to freeze the Google emails during the transition.
While the university will automatically redirect any emails sent to the old address to the students’ new address, it is recommended that students inform their contacts about the change in their email address.
Trend of Universities Transitioning Away from Google’s “Email for Life” Program
Several universities, including the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Davis, are either discontinuing or planning to phase out their “email for life” service provided by Google due to the company’s decision to introduce charges for the service.
Unlike the perpetual access promised by Google’s service, the Microsoft-based emails of UNR students will be deactivated upon graduation, as confirmed by a university spokesperson.
In the case of UNR, Google altered the terms of the agreement after promoting the service as “email for life,” which has led to financial implications that would have been borne by the students, Pillay expressed. This change follows Google’s recent layoffs, raising questions about the fairness of transferring the cost burden to students.
The Reno Gazette Journal has reached out to Google for a statement regarding this matter.