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Is Gmail THE Mail Used By Colleges and Universities?


Gone are the days of trying to navigate your college’s confusing email system. Instead, you can sync up your personal Gmail account to your school email account. Google has announced that over half of the country’s most revered institutions have switched to Google Apps for Education to help improve communication and collaboration on campus.

Google publicized the news after U.S. News and World Report released their annual college rankings. Out of this year’s top 100 universities, Google serves 61 of them, including Boston University, Harvard and Brandeis.

“While this list of schools represents traditions of academic excellence that span centuries, these institutions also clearly recognize the importance, and value, of modern technology in academia,” wrote Tom Mills, the director of education for Google.

Fourteen million students, faculty and staff are now using Google Apps for Education, which includes Docs, Groups and Calendar, among other Google features. Within three weeks since Google began hosting webmail accounts for Harvard, 98 percent of the 5,610 students made the switch, according to Harvard’s IT site.

Backupify, a Boston-based startup that’s become the leading backup provider for cloud based data, including Google Apps, has certainly seen the increase in popularity.

“Gmail is growing at rapid speed,” said Kristin Dziadul, the marketing analyst at Backupify. “Gmail is the most widely used app within the apps family, and schools can get it, virtually, for free.”

Although some higher ed institutes seem weary to use the service because they think it’s so public, others have made the switch under budget constraints and have, since, never looked back. Between the cost of purchasing an internal email system and the hiring of an IT team to maintain that system, things get expensive.

“When schools are reevaluating their budget, they’re looking more to Google Apps,” Dziadul said. “You don’t need an entire IT team, because Google has dedicated IT experts who are on-hand 24/7 to make sure it’s up and running.”

Because most students already use Gmail, the swap only feels natural, and with the different services Google offers, schools are only saving themselves money in the long run. Dziadul said that everyone she’s talked to within the higher education sector has said they’re either considering switching over to Google, are in the process of doing it or have already implemented the program.

“Backupify has definitely seen an increase because of it,” Dziadul said.

Is Gmail THE mail? Should more schools be making the switch?

via ifttt