How to Keep College Email Active After Graduation:​ Guide

Students who are nearing the end of higher education often search for how to keep college email active after graduation. This is quite a challenge as universities, by default, revoke email access of alumni and delete all the data that was there.

However, there is a way to gather all of your conversations and move them to a personal email account not tied to any educational institute, and that is what I will teach you in this blog.

First, let us understand the reasoning behind colleges’ reluctance to keep the email service active after a student graduates.

Why is it Difficult to Keep College Email Active After Graduation

This is mainly because you are not the actual owner of the account; your college is. That’s why all the final decisions regarding account availability lie with the college IT department. Like what happened in the recent Usask email shutdown.

Now the question becomes, why don’t educational institutions allow their alumni to keep email accounts? There are pretty good reasons explained below:

• First and foremost is the exponential increase in the security overhead. In many institutions that have been around for some time, thousands of students graduate every year, preventing data breaches, and it is hard to maintain the same security standard for so many users.
• An email address exists virtually, but the data needs to have a physical drive to store it. Now, for colleges, privacy is of utmost importance, so they usually keep an on-premises server. It’s not possible to add more server racks, especially now, since hardware costs are soaring.
• Moreover, when you try to keep everyone who has ever joined the institute, there is the problem of students with the same name. Creating confusion, so revoking and deleting the graduate student accounts was seen as the better alternative.

Does No College Allow Student Email To Remain Active after Graduation?

Although this rule is followed by the vast majority, there are still some exceptions. So go to your college IT department and ask them what the policy is regarding graduate student email addresses.

Depending on which college you are in, you might get to keep your email address for the rest of your life. However, still having access to the email address does not mean that it has infinite storage. You have to periodically clear out old mails.

Also Read: How to change Kakao email step by step

Some colleges offer email extension programs (which are almost always paid) that you can opt for and extend your college email access beyond its default duration. However, this extension only lasts for a limited time, usually 6 – 12 months, after which you need to move messages elsewhere or lose them forever.

A Utility That Can Help You Keep College Email Content

Even though the email account is not salvageable, you can still move all of your historical conversations that you made using the college ID to another independent account.

Traditionally you would have to forward mails or use email clients, but none of those manual methods come close to the speed and accuracy of the SysTools IMAP to IMAP migration software.

You don’t need to memorize any commands or scripts; the tool operates through an intuitive GUI and is available for both Windows and Mac machines.

 

Get your copy before you lose access to the college email and move all emails elsewhere.

Conclusion

Here I gave you the answer to the popular query on how to keep my college email active after graduation. We found that in the large majority of cases, it’s not possible to keep permanent access.

However, that does not mean that all of your data is lost. You can easily move the emails to a different account with the help of the utility that I described here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I keep my college email active after graduation, or does it get revoked immediately?
There is usually a grace period of a few weeks during which your college allows you to access the email even after graduation. However, it is often of very short duration, somewhere between 1 week and 30 days, depending on college policy.

Q: If I rejoin my institution immediately after graduation, can I keep my email ID?
No, even if you join the college as a faculty member, you don’t get to keep your student email ID. What happens is that, you get a new faculty-level email address.

Q: Why do people want to keep their school email address after graduation?
Having an active email address with an .edu domain has a lot of perks. You often get special education discounts on devices like laptops/tablets. There is a reduced fee for course material/ books, etc. Some restaurants and entertainment facilities might also have lower prices if you can prove that you are currently a student.

Q: What happens to a student’s account after graduation?
College puts virtual barricades preventing any new email from entering or leaving the account; during this period, you may have read-only access. After some time (usually after 30 days), this read-only access is also taken away. Then, the account, along with all of its data, is permanently deleted.

Q: Does college email expire after college ends?
Yes, that is the default pattern most of the time, but some colleges provide a paid extension facility. In unique circumstances, you may get to keep your address for life.