Wednesday, November 26, 2008

College email is so last year?

A friend sent me this article about a prestigious college's decision to forgo new email accounts.

What do you think?

"Officials at Boston College have made what may be a momentous decision: they've stopped doling out new email accounts to incoming students. The officials realized that the students already had established digital identities by the time they entered college, so the new email addresses were just not being utilized. The college will offer forwarding services instead. Starting next year, freshman enrolled at Boston College won't be given an actual email account complete with login and inbox, just an email address."

So, is this the start of a new trend? I think so. There are a few concerns, but in time, I think this is the way colleges and universities will go. It does make me think about a young man who I knew through a previous job. He had an email address that consisted of a gang name. Let's hope that students like him find a more appropriate email address to use when they start their college career!

1 comment:

SNW said...

I was helping a student complete an online college app the other day and I was typing the info for her. I asked her email address and it was something about 'luv2kissU' blah blah blah... I laughed. And told her we might want to change that :) It truly is an education piece that students do not realize they can be evaluated upon. While I hope it's not a deal-breaker on admission, it could be a perception problem.