Is it unusual for a math department not to have a mail/web server?

Question

I'm a PhD student in a math department at a research university in the US. When I started the program I was given an account on the department server with a website and a nice department email address. Now I've found out that the department (or the university?) is doing away with the server and instructing everyone to instead use the G Suite email and Google services that the general student body of the university uses. So I suppose I'll have to pay to host my website somewhere, or convert it manually into a Google Site as the department is suggesting (which unfortunately, to my knowledge, doesn't support math markup). I'm worried that having a Google Site as opposed to a .edu website will appear unprofessional, and I'm a bit irked that I'll have to take the time to migrate my site elsewhere. Also I think it's peculiar that not even the math faculty will have a .edu domain to host a website.

Should I be upset by this? Is this unusual? Or is this just the trend of the future? Is this more typical than I think it is?

---

Update regarding my specific scenario to address some questions in the comments: The email through GMail still gets the .edu extension as [email protected] or some variation. I'm not sure what will happen to my [email protected] email, but it sounds like that will still work? Word is that they're still figuring out specifics. But they're planning on getting rid of the web server though. They haven't been giving new faculty or grad students the @math email address or a math.university.edu/~name website like I received, and they're working with people with larger sites [on the math server] to fit their needs. But it sounds like after the switchover the math.university.edu domain won't be available to redirect to any new website either, which sucks because there's at least one faculty here with a massive website, and the switchover will break tons of links online, and references PDF notes and papers.

Answer 1

It is becoming less common for individual departments to operate their own IT infrastructure - things are usually being centralised.

It is also becoming more common for parts of that centralised IT infrastructure to be outsourced - which in practice means that email ends up on Gmail or Microsoft's system. I would expect that your email address will still have uniname.edu as its domain - it will just be operated by a cloud provider.

Along with this second tendency, it's becoming less common for universities (or departments) to provide web space to staff or students. This can be annoying. But as others have said, there's nothing unprofessional about setting up your own domain (with a sensible name) and hosting your web content there.

Answer 2

I've found out that the department (or the university?) is doing away with the server and instructing everyone to instead use the G Suite email and Google services that the general student body of the university uses.

It sounds like the university is outsourcing IT, which is normal.

Answer 3

I'm worried that having a Google Site as opposed to a .edu website will appear unprofessional...

I think that this worry is unfounded. Similarly, I don't think that it would be unprofessional were you to have a url like www.MikePierce.com. You just need to avoid having to put something like www.badboymowers.com/mikepierce on your CV when you apply for jobs.

More seriously, several of my collaborators use Google Site pages as their main professional websites, and I know of several more respected mathematicians that do so as well. And this is all off the top of my head. So I doubt you'll stand out in a negative manner if you have to migrate your website to a Google Site.

Similarly, there are also a lot of people that have .edu email addresses but choose not to use them professionally (though this is much less common). For example, one of my collaborators has a website hosted by his institution but lists his gmail email address in all of his publications.

Should I be upset by this? Is this unusual? Or is this just the trend of the future? Is this more typical than I think it is?

I think that your department's situation is that of a growing minority of departments. I think that if you have a professional looking Google Site page that is linked to by your department's official website then you'll have nothing to worry about.

Answer 4

As a math graduate student in the US, current norms make it reasonable for you to expect your department to offer you access to certain IT services, including:

1. A (free) email address that is credibly affiliated with your university’s recognized domain name, i.e.,

[email protected]

[email protected]

are both good and reasonable, but anything along the lines

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

(etc) doesn’t sound really acceptable to me. I’d be very upset if my department forced such email addresses on everyone (fortunately I’m now the chair of the computer committee, so I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen ;-)).

2. An easy (and free) web hosting solution for hosting a personal web page.

3. Ideally, the web host will have a URL associated with the university .edu domain.

4. Also ideally, any third parties that such services are contracted out to should be ethical companies that offer strong guarantees to respect users’ privacy, and have a reputation for living up to their promises in this area. In an even more ideal situation, these companies will be ones whose profits are positively correlated to how good of a job they do respecting and protecting their users’ privacy.

From the situation you described, it sounds like item 3 above is a legitimate reason for you to be upset, and potentially also item 4. With item 1, by your description it sounds like you’ll still have a campus-domain email address, which is reasonable. As for having to migrate your web page, I think you’d look a bit petty if you were to try to turn that into an issue.

Answer 5

Domain name, email and website are three different things.

Your university doesn't have to have any computer equipment at all to own the university.edu domain, all they have to do is pay for it. Having their own domain is indeed the standard so you can be pretty sure they'll keep it.

The e-mail is apparently getting outsourced to G-suite (probably together with calendar / document share). It will not be visible externally: G-suite is specifically designed to support e-mail addresses on a domain their customers own. So, again, you can be pretty sure you'll either keep your old e-mail address or get a new one on a university.edu domain, perhaps something like [email protected].

The website is a different entity usually hosted on a separate server. If I were you, I'd ask whether your university moves their web services to an external hosting (and which one). It doesn't have to be Google Sites, and if they do it right, you should be able to keep your website the way it is, unless they pick a very cheap hosting which lacks the features your website requires (this may be the reason they are "working with people with larger sites to fit their needs"). What will change if they outsource it is the way you manage your website, that's why you should ask about this better sooner than later. Which name your website will get is also up to them, and there's no relationship between e-mail and web servers other than the name: it's entirely possible to have e.g. an e-mail server with Google and host the website with the same domain name on Amazon AWS.

Answer 6

What can we expect from the infrastructure of an university, if they cannot run their own IT anymore?

An excellent university has excellent IT staff, which is able to develop and enhance software to their needs. They will also conserve and transfer IT skills to students.

I doubt a university can perform free and independent research, if all communication and data is tracked by a cloud provider who runs also one of the most often used search engines. Once the IT is outsourced it is practically impossible to rebuild the own infrastructure when the experts were gone.

Most universities exist since more than 100 years an invested a lot of effort to stay independent.

A university would not outsource their most important infrastructure as long as they are financially secured.

You should be highly concerned.

Answer 7

As @flyto said, there are many universities using google, GitHub, and Microsoft as their cloud provider for mail/storage/web/repo/authentication. AFAIK, both have HIPPA and PII approved products, so those universities are mitigating their risk by transferring them to those providers. I personally know of 8 universities which are using Microsoft and 5 google for mail; that does not mean Microsoft is more popular but my sample size is small.

About domain names, you do the same as you would with every single cloudy web provider out there: edit your DNS to direct queries properly or have them run it (and then you edit your domain as needed). There is nothing stopping bogus university to have office.bogus.edu, which can redirect to a office365 landing page customized using their identity. Their members can also go to the Microsoft default office website and login using their university credentials, which would direct them to the university-specific stuff.

There is nothing stopping you from having a [email protected] email address instead of [email protected]; one of them is just the alias to the other.