During the summer prior to the 2024-2025 academic year, the University of Connecticut migrated all UConn emails from Google Workplace to Microsoft 365. This decision has been met with generally negative reactions amongst the student body. Although some students understand the reason for the switch and why the university made the decision, many are still frustrated with the change, describing Microsoft 365 as “difficult” and “confusing.”
In a poll held on The Daily Campus’ Instagram asking if students were “happy with the change to Microsoft,” 147 students responded that they weren’t happy with the change, with only 23 students responding that they were. Third-semester theatre studies major Oz Santa Lucia talked about his feelings towards the changes when asked his thoughts on it.
“I have severely negative thoughts about it,” Santa Lucia said regarding the switch. “It’s really difficult to navigate, the calendar functions are significantly less and the overall system is just messier.”
Students are not the only ones affected by this change. Fifth-semester political science major Ava Cunningham talked about how the change has affected her tier II organization at UConn when asked about her reaction to the change.
“It has been somewhat disorienting to try and utilize a platform that has not been commonly used throughout my academic career so far,” Cunningham said. “Beyond that, it has proved inconvenient and difficult to determine how to move forward with the formal functions of my tier II organization given that the previous Google drive platform had been the ‘home base’ of our members’ work and communication with each other.”
However, not all students have reacted negatively. Third-semester biological sciences major Molly Forker said that she doesn’t mind the switch when asked about the migration.
“I don’t really understand the switch, but it doesn’t affect me too much, so I don’t mind,” Forker said. “I was more used to the Google platform, so when switching to Microsoft I needed to learn how it worked since it is a little different. But other than that, I’m not too affected by it, and I can navigate it pretty easily.”
Seventh-semester computer science major Amogh Chaubey said that he understood why students are frustrated, but also why the change had to happen.
“I mean, I understand why a lot of students are annoyed. I was pretty used to Google Drive, I like it a lot more, but it’s not really a huge surprise because Google ended their free education benefits they’re giving to all the universities. UConn’s a research university so we have a ton of storage and since Google upped the prices it wouldn’t make sense to keep going, so I get why they switched it from the administration standpoint. It’s a little bit inconvenient but I get it.”
UConn ITS first informed students on July 10, 2023, where they notified students of the change and their rationale via email. The email talked about UConn’s support of both Google Workplace and Microsoft 365, until “2022 when Google unilaterally changed their terms and conditions,” increasing prices to maintain Google Drive.
“The institutional relationship is now effectively no better than a personal relationship. It is no longer free, and the expense scales with usage. For a large university with substantial storage needs, the cost is significant, and hard caps/quotas are necessary,” the email read.
In a follow-up email sent out on March 19, 2024, UConn ITS told students about the migration process, and the limitations of the migration.
“Unfortunately, not all files or features in Google Workspace will transfer to Microsoft 365. Links to other UConn Google Drive files will break and need to be recreated. You will also need to “re-share documents,” the email read.