[tialys]

I think this is an excellent idea, however from the standpoint of someone who provides tech support to students at my university, this would be a disaster for a good portion of the student body. A good number of people here can barely turn on a computer (and we GIVE THEM a laptop). Assuming that people have an identity established seems logical, but is still too early. Some may say these are outliers, however looking at our support tickets, I'd say a good number of people have one email address, and thats the one we give them.

[Goronmon]

How big of a difference is it between creating and maintaining an e-mail address for each student, and instructing students as to how to create an e-mail account with say Gmail, for instance?

In both cases the student needs to figure out how to access a mail system in order to actually use the e-mail address.

[pyroman]

Also, a lot of universities have their application process online and require an e-mail address to apply. So the information is already available and that would eliminate the step of requiring the student to set up forwarding manually.

If it's already a method of contact between you and the university, why add another place to look by creating a separate inbox?

[cabalamat]

Aren't people who go to university meant to be fairly bright? If they can't figure out email, they probably wouldn't benefit from a university education anyway.

[breily]

I do tech support part time for students at my school, and I have to agree with the parent. I'm astounded every day by how bad some people are with computers. We have normal email accounts here, and people still have trouble figuring out to use them. I personally think its a great idea (the first thing I did when I got to school was forward my school account), but I'll bet 75% of the people wouldn't be able to figure it out.