Do you use your umd.edu e-mail account?
If you’re like most of the denizens of the Diamondback newsroom, you probably don’t. You probably prefer a speedier service — like Gmail or Yahoo. This trend is not unique to our newsroom or this university, where students increasingly prefer personal e-mail accounts to university ones.
More than 25 percent of universities that offer Ph.Ds are considering ditching student email addresses, according to a new report by Educause. This is a big change, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which reports that only 1 to 2 percent of universities were considering this four years ago.
So while there is no evidence mail.umd.edu is going the way of the DoDo, don’t be too surprised if the .edu extension for e-mails slowly becomes a thing of the past.
Bad idea… While I used gmail as my mail “service”, I definitely appreciated having the .edu (forwarding) address when applying for internships and other such formal communication to show that I was associated with the university.