Cornell College was a trend-leader two years ago when it outsourced student e-mail to provide better service and save money.
According to the 2008 Campus Computing Survey, put out annually by the Campus Computing Project, 42 percent of the 600 colleges surveyed were considering switching to a service to host student e-mail. Of those, nearly 57 percent were considering Google Apps for Education.
That’s the service that Cornell switched to in spring 2008. Mike Cerveny, director of Information Technology for the college, said the major draw was the massive increase in storage for students. The service offers several gigabytes of storage, where before, students were limited to only 25 megabytes of storage, he said.
That was a major problem, and it also affected faculty and staff, as well, he said, because there was not a feasible option to meet everyone’s needs.
Cornell senior Erin McNeill said that before the switch, she’d get a message at least once a month telling her that her mailbox was full, and would have to delete old messages before she could get new mail. Now, she doesn’t have to.
“I like to save things and have records,” she said.
When the college was considering the move to Google’s mail service, it polled the students, Cerveny said, and an overwhelming majority supported the move.
While mailbox size was the main reason for the move, there have been a number of other benefits, too, he said. For one, moving the students’ e-mail off the college’s server saved about $10,000 annually in licensing fees. And the e-mail service is integrated with Google’s documents, service, calendar and instant messaging programs. All of those things were available to students before in some form, he said, but now everything is in the same place.
McNeill really appreciates those extra features. She’s used Google Documents for class, and said it really helps with collaboration. But Google Chat is among her favorite parts: it lets her chat not only with other students, but also with any other Gmail user around the world.
Other colleges have also made the switch, but much more recently, according to a Gazette story Thursday. Coe College in Cedar Rapids switched in January, and Iowa State University switched in August 2009. The University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa are looking into switching.