JULES HOEPTING
Managing Editor
Google recently announced a reduction in the storage limits of Google Workspace for Education accounts from unlimited storage to 20GB. This will be effective July 1, 2022.
In response, ITS has repeatedly emailed current students, faculty, staff, associates, alumni and emeritus (retired professors) about checking the file storage in their Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos — also known as Google Workspace. If the 20GB quota has been exceeded, account owners are required to migrate files to other locations. Fredonia Google Workspace accounts of visitors and Student Association organizations will be limited to 5GB of data and must also migrate files if the 5BG quota is exceeded.
“There aren’t any specific plans for compensating for the loss in storage with Google, because there’s already something in place. OneDrive with Microsoft is the means that everyone can use for what they need in regard to storage. Everyone — current students and faculty — has a terabyte of storage within it,” explained Prince Aziz Hunt, an ITS Student Technician, via email. “One can log in to OneDrive using their Fredonia email credentials and just transfer everything over as needed after downloading all of it,” Hunt further explained.
Within the repeated ITS emails to owners of Fredonia Workspace accounts, a link explaining suggested alternative sources of storage, including OneDrive, was provided. According to the “Fredonia Google Workspace Storage FAQs” website page available on Fredonia Answers, last updated March 27, it is recommended current students, faculty and staff use the suggested alternative means of storage because they are unable to purchase additional storage for their Fredonia Google Email accounts. “The university is limited to the enterprise license that Google offers and cannot add storage to individual accounts,” the webpage explains.
ITS is currently offering weekly Google Storage Training sessions via Zoom to guide members of the campus community on how to transfer files and any other questions they may have. Registration takes place through the ITS Training Calendar; the link to the calendar is provided in the recurring ITS emails.
To further save on storage, alumni Fredonia Workspace accounts will be deleted. According to an email correspondence from Benjamin Hartung, Interim Chief Information Officer of the ITS Executive Board, students graduating in the spring of 2022 and all future graduates will lose access to their Fredonia Google Workspace account two years after graduation. The quota limit of 20GB still applies to these alumni as of July 1. Alumni who graduated before spring 2022 will lose access to their Fredonia Google Workspace account on July 1, 2022. Emeritus will not lose their accounts and will just be subject to the quota.
Although the Google Workspace storage limit was implemented by Google and not the university, it was the university’s decision to abide by a plan that limits storage to 20GB. This decision was made by the SUNY Fredonia Information Technology Advisory Board (ITAB), the Chief Information Officer, and the President’s Cabinet.
According to the Workspace Storage FAQ page, over the past few years the university has had to make “difficult decisions to ensure the university is able to continue to provide a safe, secure and user-friendly computing environment for the entire campus community.” This is due to “unpreceded changes across higher education that range from extreme financial challenges due to low enrollment, increased regulatory mandates and an increase in the number of security threats (e.g. phishing attacks).”
The page further explains that changes in Google licensing, Duo Multi-factor Authentication licensing and the IT support staff needed for these “mission-critical services” result in savings “well over an estimated half a million dollars annually.” Hartung further explained via email, “In order to provide close to the same level of data storage to all 22K+ current Fredonia Google Workspace users and protect those accounts adequately, it would cost the University approximately (est. $1,056,000 Google licensing + $75,000 Duo MFA licensing) $1,131,000 annually.”
See “Reactions to SUNY Fredonia Google Workspace storage reduction.“