Beginning in June, Saint Mary’s students will see their Google Workspace storage allotments decrease from 15 gigabytes to 10GB. The change was announced in an email from Saint Mary’s Chief Information Officer Katie Rose on March 24. Her email stated the new storage allocation applies to the combined use of Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos.
In a written statement to The Observer, Rose explained the change is in response to Google’s transition away from free and unlimited storage for higher education institutions. New quotas have been implemented at other colleges and universities across the country, including the University of Notre Dame, and Saint Mary’s College will follow a similar model.
“Google no longer provides free, unlimited storage to higher education institutions, and in order to best manage Saint Mary’s Google storage, we must begin implementing storage quotas, similar to other schools,” Rose wrote to The Observer.
Access to adequate storage is important for students, junior Laney Padilla, a student worker at the Huisking Instructional Technology Resource Center, said. The documents and emails students save can accumulate quickly.
Padilla described losing documents because one does not pay for additional storage as “really inconvenient.”
Rose said most students would not be significantly affected by the change. The majority of Saint Mary’s students are far from approaching the new storage quota.
“Students won’t notice any difference unless they start to near the quota limit, and right now, the vast majority of students use much less than the new quota. Google will alert you as you approach the limit so that you can decide which files you want to keep or remove from Google Drive, Photos or Gmail. If you reach the quota limit, you won’t be able to add new files to Google Drive or Photos, and you won’t be able to edit files that already exist there. However, you will continue to receive email for a grace period,” Rose wrote.
If students do exceed the new storage limit, students will continue to receive emails and retain their ability to send them for a short period of time before losing access. Additionally, they will only have viewing access for Google Drive and Photos and will not be able to add new files or photos to their Workspace.
Rose noted that if Saint Mary’s students need more storage for academic purposes, they can request it through the Resnet office.
Rose recognized that digital storage is an important asset for students, faculty and staff.
“Everyone needs storage — it’s important for nearly all the work that happens at Saint Mary’s, whether someone is a student, faculty, or staff member. We must take steps to manage Saint Mary’s Google storage space differently to ensure that everyone can continue to use Google services,” Rose wrote.
Notre Dame is reducing access to Google storage as well, effective July 1. Storage for personal accounts at Notre Dame will be limited to 100GB for Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Shared Drives in Google and Microsoft 365 will be limited to 5 terabytes of digital storage. Additional storage can be purchased for a fee, $150 per 1TB per year.
