Re: Student Account Retention

[Benjamin Schwartz <bschwar2 () ASHLAND EDU>]

Here at Ashland we had a long standing myth supported by zero documentation that alumni get to keep email forever. As 
you might guess this practice led to other user types getting to keep user accounts and email, "forever." 

We have recently put a stop to this because of the numerous issues it has caused in combination with the difficulty in 
managing a great deal of scenarios related to user account types. Since our process is automated the best way to handle 
this problem was to stop it.

We accomplished this by giving graduates one month post graduation to vacate their email account with automated message 
notifications to inform them of the account getting shutdown. We found notifications were helpful as most don't read 
policies. Other user types have followed a similar process. 

We have successfully removed roughly 43,000 accounts in the last 6 months. Making our account pool cleaner, more 
secure, and manageable. 

Our biggest battle was with the alumni office. 


Benjamin Schwartz
Director of Infrastructure and Security
Ashland University