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Should you hang onto your .edu e-mail address after your done or kick it to the curb?

Being a student at a higher education institution comes with some great perks such as making new friends, for the most part you can make your own schedule, if you’re a night person, depending on where you are attending higher education you can enjoy the nightlife that it has offer and you also get the benefits of snagging some pretty good discounts sometimes even free.

After the semester ends unless you are scheduled to begin the next semester or when you graduate some will take back the e-mail address unless you chose to pay a fee to keep alive while others will allow you to keep your e-mail address as long as you keep it in good standing order without having to pay.

Why do higher education institutions even issue email addresses to students?

There are probably several reasons why higher institutions choose to issue an issued email address to each of their students however I will only be addressing a few reasons which they are but not limited to:

• Not all students may have an email address, some of them may have an email address that they share with other people, providing an email address to all of the students this gives each student their own personal email address.

• Using several platforms to send and receive emails can sometimes be a complete nightmare because not all platforms successfully send and receive emails so if all students are using the higher institutions issued email address they will all be using the same platform, this eliminates the problem with emails not being sent or received successfully.

• Email address i.e. jdoe123@email.xyz.edu or part of the email address i.e. jdoe123 will be the username in order to log into the higher institutions online portal. This also keeps the email address short and away to identify who is the account user to make sure the higher institutions policies is being followed.

So why was .edu email address pretty much like the golden ticket in the past?

The domain name extension “.edu”, without quotations is a reserved domain name extension that only higher education institutions can have i.e. colleges or universities. The general public, for-profit businesses, companies are not permitted to register a domain name using this domain name extension this also includes nonprofit organizations, government agencies including federal and state.

Only allowing higher education institutions to be able to register a domain name using .edu gave this domain name extension the exclusiveness. With this domain name extension having this exclusiveness this is probably the reason why in the past many businesses and companies give discounts and sometimes even free to anyone who had a .edu email address.

Jump forward to today, the domain name extension .edu is still exclusive to higher education institutions unfortunately if you still have your .edu email address that you received from when you attended higher education if you’re currently not enrolled it may no longer be the golden ticket as it once was.

Don’t be fooled!

There are some websites out there say that they are selling .edu email addresses, most likely you will not receive what they are claiming to be selling. If in fact you do receive a valid .edu email address depending on what you’re trying to do the email address itself may not be the only thing you need, you may additional information as proof to show you are currently enrolled.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned! There are some websites that are giving tips on how you can alter official transcript, class schedule, student identification or other documents, but this is strongly NOT recommended. Submitting altered documents in order to receive a discount could make you liable for paying the difference, account suspended/terminated without refund and/or you could be getting into some legal trouble.

So why the need for the proof?

Meany of these businesses and companies is making the claim that they are losing money as everyone is using their .edu e-mail address to get discounts meant for students so they have hired third party to do the verifying.

The .edu loophole or exploit?

A longtime ago I hard of a collage system that you could register with this collage system and you wouldn’t need to enroll into any class(es) or provide any credit-card information to have a fully functional working .edu e-mail address. This loophole if you want to call it or more of an exploit has scene been closed. I think this is more of the reason that many businesses and companies are cracking down by not just going based off the .edu e-mail address but now using third parties verifiers like SheerID to verify someone’s status as anyone in the past could have signed up and never stepped a foot inside but just did this for the discount.

There are a few still out their, but this come rarity that do not ask for any proof other than an a .edu email address, but I think that will soon go away and only be a memory of the .edu golden ticket.

What other options do I have, if I don’t want to or I can’t provide any documentation to verifiers like SheerID?

If you don’t want to or you’re unable to provide documentation to verifiers like SheerID there are alternate remedies that are perfectly legal and in some cases actually may be cheaper.

• If you go on eBay and type in Windows Pro 10 Key you can actually receive the operating license key for the pro version less than $10, compared to other marketplaces even with a student discount.
• If you want to listen to commercial free music while you study, you can go to YouTube make a playlist of all your favorite songs and some browsers already have an ad blocker already installed so you can listen to music completely ad free or you can install an ad blocker.
• There are plenty of free streaming services out there that offers a wide variety of entertainment some offer limited commercials.

So if I can’t get any discounts, should I keep my .edu email address?
If you still have access to your student email address that was issued to you when you attended higher education, keep it, it is good to have and you may be able to reconnect with some of the friends that you made while you were attending college.

I still have my email address that I received although I don’t use it because the school system can decide to stop the service at any time, with or without any reason or with without any warning also they also have access to any communication that is transmitted through the email.